


love in a fallen country

by birdsofthesoul



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Pandemics, Shameless Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24480850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsofthesoul/pseuds/birdsofthesoul
Summary: The world is four years deep into a never-ending pandemic and it's made some adjustments to keep the economy afloat. In dystopian Chicago, it's the Southside that's getting immolated on the altar of the Dow Jones. Ian doesn't get to choose his job, hedge his risks, or even pick where he lives, but he still wants better for Mickey. He'll lube up for the world when it fucks him in the ass if it means Mickey gets to live his life.Mickey doesn't care about any of that. He just wants to keep everyone alive.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Iggy Milkovich & Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 70
Kudos: 78





	1. you misinterpret everything, even the silence

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to [filorux](http://filorux.tumblr.com/) for their incredible artwork! Please go show their art some love [here](https://filorux.tumblr.com/post/619616788718747648/love-in-a-fallen-country-a-fanfic-by) and [here](https://twitter.com/KittyconvoyFilo/status/1267272559570980864)!

The house was dark when Ian came home.

“Mick?” he called out, experimentally, and no one answered. He waited for a beat and flipped on the lights. There were no dishes in the sink, no sign that dinner had been made and then put away, only a note taped to the fridge. _Went for groceries_ , it said tersely in Mickey’s messy scrawl. _Back soon_.

It was after eight, and it had started snowing when Ian had left the Gallagher house. He’d been hoping that the cold would have kept Mickey inside, where they had two space heaters, but Mickey must have heard about Marolf’s upcoming visit from Carl or Liam. He probably hadn’t wanted to wait at home after that, Ian thought glumly as he dialed Mickey’s number.

Mickey picked up on the seventh ring. “Ian?” he said.

Ian exhaled. “Where are you, Mick?” he asked. It came out more sharply than he’d intended and he winced.

“Relax, Gallagher,” Mickey said. “I went to the Kash and Grab. Got distracted by some posters on my way back.”

“The ones in the alley behind the store?”

Mickey was quiet on the other end. “Yeah,” he said finally, sounding somewhat resigned. “Guess you saw them too, huh?”

“You been trying to take them down?” Ian thought of Mickey scouring the alleys of Canaryville with a pocket knife, scraping off all the posters shaming Frank for being a piece of shit just because they made Ian’s life that much harder, and he felt a lump rise up in his throat. He swallowed. “Wait for me,” he said, grabbing his keys. “I’m gonna come get you.”

“You want me to wait in the snow?” Mickey said, annoyed. “Ian, I’m on my way back.”

“Then I’ll meet you halfway.” 

He hung up before Mickey could protest some more and went into their bedroom to turn on one of the heaters. They’d been meaning to get thicker curtains that actually blocked out the cold, but that kept getting shoved back in favor of stocking up on Clorox wipes and isopropyl alcohol. They probably weren’t ever going to put up those curtains – not in this house, if Marolf had her way – but it couldn’t hurt to buy them anyway. If Marolf had them move, the curtains could damn well come along with them. It wasn’t like she’d send them anywhere nice in the winter.

California had been sealed off for a long time now.

The night air hit him like a slap to the face when he stepped out the door. He buried his face in his scarf and walked with his head down, thinking how he’d answer when Mickey inevitably asked about Marolf. Mickey wouldn’t put him on the spot like that, but he’d want to know if Ian was planning on taking one for the Gallaghers again.

The answer was yes.

He felt fucking awful about it, but there wasn’t a better option. He’d told Lip as much earlier. Last time he’d been faced with the same choice, Fiona had just come back from feeding pigs in Iowa and Lip had been sent to God knows where to do God knows what, and Debbie had had her hands full with Frannie. She’d asked for a job that was five minutes _walking_ distance from home, which had thoroughly fucked up Ian’s chances of landing anything in Chicago, until Marolf had decided to take pity on him and send him to the docks.

The docks weren’t doing so hot these days though. And it wasn’t like anything else had changed. Fiona didn’t want to go back to raising pigs, Lip was in no hurry to get shipped back to bumfuck nowhere, and Debbie was still a single mother of a three-year-old. Ian, hopefully, was still a good brother. So Waukesha was back on the table, like it or not, and Ian was going to have to persuade Mickey that pig farming could be fun.

Oh yeah, Mickey had definitely hit the jackpot of boyfriends.

Ian sped up when the Kash and Grab came into view, and rounded the corner to find Mickey in the back alley, vigorously shaking a can of spray paint.

“Hey,” Ian said, coming to a stop a few feet away from Mickey. “Thought you said you were walking back.”

“Saw they’d put up a fresh batch,” Mickey said, nodding at the evenly spaced posters papering the brick wall. “So I thought I’d make my artwork a little more permanent this time.”

Ian took a closer look at the spray can Mickey was wielding. “Mod Podge?”

“These fuckers are gonna be scraping dicks off the walls for days to come,” Mickey said, looking terribly proud of himself. “What do you think?”

“Looks amazing,” Ian said, grinning back at him. “I’m especially a fan of the way you obliterated Frank’s name with a deformed penis.”

“Yeah, well, thought it was fitting. He’s a piece of shit, but no point in giving people more reasons to point fingers, right?”

Like the people of Canaryville needed _posters_ to list Frank’s sins. “People are gonna know it’s him anyway,” Ian said, because he once spent an afternoon removing Fiona’s name from all of the posters, and he knew that shit was exhausting. “You didn’t have to go to all this trouble, Mick.”

“Got bored waiting for you to come home,” Mickey said frankly.

His words didn’t carry any heat, but Ian flinched anyway. He studied Mickey closely, but Mickey didn’t look mad, nor did he sound very accusatory. “Sorry,” Ian offered, just in case.

“What for?” Mickey said. “I knew you were gonna be late. Fiona called a family meeting, right?”

“Lip, actually,” Ian said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “He, uh, wanted to talk about Marolf.”

Mickey’s shoulders stiffened. “I figured,” he said at last, sounding resigned if anything. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t do that,” Ian said automatically.

“Do what?”

“Touch your face.”

Mickey sighed again and shoved his hands into his pockets too. “So, you still on the hook?”

“Yeah.”

Mickey tsked. “Might not be so bad,” he said philosophically after a moment. “We swayed her away from Waukesha last time, didn’t we?”

Ian didn’t remember anything of the sort happening. “You mean, she felt bad for separating the bipolar kid from the rest of his family?”

“Get your head out of your ass, Ian, you really think a lifelong bureaucrat like Marolf gives a shit about that?” Mickey leaned back against the alley wall and dug out a pack of Reds from his pocket. “No, man, she was bought with fifty N95 masks and a year’s supply of Purell.”

It was like a light bulb had gone off in his head. “You never said,” Ian said, suddenly feeling very off kilter. “You were mad at me at the time.”

“We fight all the time, Gallagher,” Mickey pointed out, tapping out a cigarette and putting it between his lips. He flicked his lighter absently a couple of times, and then cupped his hand around the flame when it finally caught. Once he lit his smoke, he took a long drag and looked at Ian. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna let them ship you off to a pig pen.”

That fucking loyalty. There it was again, reminding Ian that Mickey had always had his back, even when he hadn’t been able to return the favor. There had been vague resolutions to do better over the years, sudden surges of ambition to prove himself worthy, but all of that had been put on hold since the first outbreak.

The Gallaghers _needed_ , and Ian had to provide.

“Mickey,” he started, but he trailed off after one word because he didn’t know what to say. Gratitude was pointless, and apologies were inadequate. “You do too much for me,” he said at last, swallowing past his dry throat.

Mickey leveled an unimpressed look at him. “Ian,” he sighed, “let’s not do this out here, okay? I’m freezing, and you’re probably starving.”

“Yeah,” Ian said, “yeah. Let’s go home.” He bent down and picked up the small box of groceries next to the can of Mod Podge. “This all you bought?”

“I’m not gonna buy perishables if we’re leaving town in a week,” Mickey said, flicking off the hot ash. “You’re looking at tonight’s dinner.”

“Thin crust margherita pizza,” Ian said, reading off the package label. “Sounds fancy. C’mon.” He held out an arm and waited for Mickey to detach himself from the brick wall. “You said you were cold, right?” Mickey came reluctantly, grumbling under his breath, and Ian wrapped his arm around Mickey’s shoulders. “Hey,” he said, tugging Mickey closer, “if we end up staying, promise me you won’t fuck with the posters anymore, okay?”

“Is this more of your self-flagellating crap?” Mickey asked suspiciously, twisting under Ian’s arm to catch his eyes.

“Nah, this is just my regular _worried about Mickey_ crap,” Ian said. “Don’t want you roaming outside when there’s a fucking virus on the loose.”

“You gonna keep me under lockdown? Make me your housewife?” Mickey teased, cocking an eyebrow. But he sobered quickly before Ian could reply in kind. “You know I gotta work, right? It’s not like I can just hole up until the current wave peaks.”

“You’re self-employed.”

“Which means I’m the one bleeding cash if I don’t show up,” Mickey said. “Besides, I just inked that deal with Markovich.”

“ _Mick_ ey,” Ian said, dragging out the first syllable of his name. “You know what I mean. Work is work, but the rest of the time, you gotta at least _try_ to stay put. It’s not just the virus you gotta look out for; I heard the council is clamping down on noncompliants and I don’t wanna come home to find you locked up again.”

“Wisconsin’s looking better by the minute,” Mickey muttered, but at Ian’s insistent nudging, he relented. “Okay, okay, _Jesus_. I’ll sit my ass indoors. Not like that’s gonna do much good anyway when Iggy’s out running wild.”

“We’ll leave him handcuffed in the basement,” Ian promised. “As soon as he comes back.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Mickey said, but he was smiling. He pointed his cigarette at Ian. “He’d kick your ass.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” Ian complained, letting go of Mickey to shove his shoulder. “What happened to being supportive?”

Mickey laughed. “I’ll hold him down while you cuff him,” he said, grinning, as he settled back under Ian’s arm. “You happy now?”

“Fuck no,” Ian said, but he tucked Mickey under his arm more securely. “We gotta get your brother into the basement first.”

\--

The power went out in the middle of the night.

Ian woke up chilled to the bone. He slept on the side of the windows, so he was Mickey’s first and only barrier against the creeping cold, and when he sat up, Mickey shifted closer to him unconsciously, reluctant to give up his only source of heat. Ian tucked the covers around him and got up to see what could be done.

He winced when his feet touched the floor; it was like walking on ice, but he didn’t bother pulling on socks because he only had one clean pair left. The rest were decontaminating in the quarantine zone, along with their winter coats and their jeans. They didn’t have anything left in the closet that they could use as an emergency blanket, except for the years-old newspaper Mickey kept to line the drawers.

Ian made the executive decision to line the windows with them instead. They were better than nothing, and if he sealed them with a layer of Mickey’s Mod Podge, they’d hold until tomorrow; his fingers and toes had gone numb from the cold, and he was fully invested into getting back under the covers as fast as he could.

“What are you doing?” Mickey asked, voice thick with sleep. Ian turned around to see Mickey pushing himself up against the pillows, still half asleep. Mickey rubbed his eyes and fumbled for the watch under his pillow. “It’s two in the morning – you feeling okay?”

He looked wary, a little too cautious, and Ian felt a spike of annoyance at how _carefully_ he was treading, and he had to remind himself that Mickey was just worried about him. “The power went out,” he explained, flicking the light switch on and off to demonstrate. “That’s why it’s so cold.”

“Oh,” Mickey said. He watched blankly as Ian gestured at his handiwork, and then it finally registered. “We can get thicker curtains tomorrow,” he said, yawning. “Just come back to bed, Ian, we got four hours before we need to be up.”

“I’m almost done,” Ian said. He laid his palm flat on the layers of paper and pressed hard against the glass pane. His eyes were finally adjusting to the dark and he could make out the headings and some of the body text. The newspapers weren’t old copies of the _Tribune_ like he’d thought. “Hey Mick,” he asked, “why do you have the LA Times?”

“They come with the shipments.”

“The masks and stuff? What, your guy wraps them in newspaper?”

“Something like that.”

“You, uh, read them?”

Mickey had gone quiet behind him.

Ian padded back to the bed. “Mick?”

“No,” Mickey said, “it’s not like there’s a point. Do I look like a masochist to you?”

“Wanting to know how Mandy’s doing doesn’t make you a masochist,” Ian said, but he knew better than to press the issue. He climbed back under the covers, shivering. Mickey inched to the left and Ian gratefully sank into the spot he’d vacated, burrowing down into the sheets that were still warm with Mickey’s body heat.

Mickey curled back towards him, wrapping his arms around Ian’s torso and tangling their legs together until their bodies were pressed so close together that his nose was touching Ian’s collarbone. He’d pulled his pillow so far down along the bed that his head was entirely under the covers — he was clearly a veteran of winters without heat. “Fuck,” he mumbled, sounding drowsy again, “you’re like a block of ice.”

“You don’t have to warm me up,” Ian offered, but Mickey had already drifted off. Sighing, Ian gently extricated himself to turn onto his back so that he didn’t bleed all the heat out of Mickey. He stared up at the whorls and peaks of the popcorn ceiling. The cold had chased off the fuzzy edges of sleep and now he was wide awake.

He’d have to take down the paper insulation before they went to work. People _knew_ what Mickey did, but it was still dumb as fuck to advertise his ties to California. Last thing he wanted was Mickey going down for scooping FEMA, which was how Fiona had ended up in a hog barn. She’d toughed it out because she wanted to come home legally for the kids, but she admitted to him later that she’d thought about running.

He wished she’d run. She should have left and never looked back. Lip should have run too. He’d been so cocky, so confident that they’d send someone else — he’d kept a little notebook of names, and he’d calculate each person’s chances of getting sent down to New Mexico, repeatedly, feverishly, and every time he’d lean back, satisfied because maybe some poor fuck was going to get exiled to the desert, but Lip Gallagher was staying in Chicago, no doubt about it. And then his advisor had taken him aside and told him that the group had determined he was the best candidate to undergo “training” in the new government lab. _C’est la vie_ , Youens had said when Lip started listing all the reasons why he was needed at home. He was immovable and Lip was not. So Lip backed down. He packed his bags like a good little soldier, and he waved goodbye from the L, and then it was radio silence for the next thirteen months.

And now it was Ian’s turn.

C’est la vie, indeed.


	2. illusions are more common than changes in fortune

It was 12:03 PM and Mickey was wishing that life came with a fast forward button, because the next three hours were shaping up to be a total write-off. His shipment was stranded in Iowa, and no goods meant no deals, so he was gonna have to drive out to get the shit himself if he didn’t want the local cops seizing his cargo.

“Yo, Iggy,” he called out when he hung up the pay phone, “we got enough to fill Markovich’s orders right now?”

Iggy looked up from where he was leaning against the pickup door. “Once the goods get here, yeah,” he said after a beat. “Why? Your guy bailed?”

“Got as far as Iowa. Fuck me, we’re shit outta luck. How many boxes are we short now?”

“Try crates,” Iggy said. “Just one though — you think Markovich will accept his deliveries in two shipments?

“Doesn’t really have a choice now, does he?”

Iggy leveled him a flat look, and Mickey waved him off. He was actually pretty fucking invested in staying on Tony Markovich’s good side, but it wasn’t like he could stick his hand up his ass and just magically produce the last crate of PPE. He tried to work around delays, but this kind of shit was standard; Tony would just have to deal.

“If we kick in the stuff you set aside for Gallagher, we can pull together five crates,” Iggy said. “The fuck happened to our shit?”

“Miguel panicked and dumped his truck behind a McDonald’s.”

“Fuck.”

“Soonest I can go grab the masks is tomorrow.”

“Well, then, just give Markovich his masks now. It’s not like your boy won’t be provided for — business is business, Mickey, and we can’t afford to lose the cops.”

“I’ve seen fuck all of the newest stuff,” Mickey said, feeling a headache start to build up behind his eyes. “Look, I said N95, but I didn’t specify a brand. They might have sent us the masks with the spray-on filters.”

“The fuck’s a spray-on filter?”

“What does it sound like? The filter’s made from a spray solvent — mesh from a spray can, get it? Jesus.”

“And this kind of filter doesn’t work?”

“How the fuck would I know?” Mickey snapped. “Look, if it’s good enough for California, it’s good enough for us. It’s definitely better than a cloth mask, probably better than a surgical one, so who cares if the filter came from a can?”

“Uh, people who might start looking for better options?” Iggy said, shooting him a mutinous glare. “You’re the one who wanted to save the 3M masks for Gallagher and pawn the knock-offs off on Markovich. Which is a spectacularly bad financial decision, since Markovich is the _only_ guy keeping us in business right now. Do you even know there’s a new guy in town trying to steal our clients?”

“So there’s competition,” Mickey said, rolling his eyes. “There’s always competition, big fucking deal. Doesn’t mean we’re going under.”

“You don’t even know who he is, do you?” Iggy demanded. “He’s scooped a third of our new deals and you didn’t even bother to look him up? The fuck have you been doing?”

“Getting new deals,” Mickey said pointedly. “So tell me. Who’s the shithead I need to beat up?”

Iggy didn’t have the guy’s name, or his plates, or anything that Mickey could really work with. He had a blurry picture of a Northside rando, which was about as useful as a dildo made of jello, and the deep-set conviction that the dude had pockets deeper than the Mariana Trench.

“You need money to make money, and the guy carries cash in briefcases,” he insisted.

Mickey was deeply unimpressed. “So the dude liquidated all of his assets. That’s not gonna do him any good in a fucking pandemic.”

“He’ll be coming after our sources next. California’s not doing so great with money — they’ll sell to the highest bidder.”

“Maybe. But I’m guessing this guy’s a newbie and he’s thrown all his cash into one transaction. He’s got to break even, and he won’t be able to do that if we undercut him.”

“We _can’t_ undercut him when we’re not even selling the same goods! He’s selling 3M and Honeywell, and you’re peddling knock-offs.” Iggy looked at him like he was beyond salvation. “You keep doing that and Markovich is gonna turn to him to get the masks, and where does that leave us?”

Mickey was quickly running out of fucks to give. “Wisconsin?”

“So that’s your plan then? Fuck off with Gallagher to feed the pigs and leave me here to rot?”

“You can always team up with the new guy if you don’t wanna come along.”

Iggy gaped at him. “Now you’re pawning _me_ off?”

“Cut the dramatics,” Mickey said. “You’re a grade-A piece of shit stuck to the bottom of my shoe. We both know I’m not getting rid of you that easy, so let me bottom line this for you — everything’s up in the air until Ian gets his new job. We’ll figure out the details afterwards.”

“I can’t believe Dad said you had a good head for business.”

“Hey, you wanna run this outfit, you can take over anytime.”

“Like I’d do that to you,” Iggy grumbled, subsiding.

“Then trust me when I say things aren’t as bad as you make them out to be,” Mickey said wearily. “Tony’s more loyal than that, and he’s not gonna drop us for some douchebag with a bad dye job.”

“That douchebag has half the station eating out of his hand. You know, the half that’s more _senior_ than Markovich?”

“Well, what do you want me to do? Give him a beatdown?”

“Nah,” Iggy said. “I can do that myself. What you need to do is kiss Tony Markovich’s asshole so good he begs you for a rim job.”

Mickey sighed. “Fine,” he said, conceding. “I’ll swing by the station after we meet with Marolf. Now please, I’m begging you, shut the fuck up and get back to work.”

“Like we actually have work,” Iggy scoffed. “Get your ass back in the car. I’m gonna drop you off at the port.”

\--

The port was swarming with FEMA officials, and while Mickey had never clashed with them directly, he didn’t feel like pushing his luck. He fished a bandana out of his pocket, wrapped it around his face, and headed down to the docks to find Ian.

He found Ian sitting on an empty shipping container, away from the crowd. He’d removed his mask to eat, and now it dangled from one ear, swinging precariously close to his sandwich every time he took a bite. When he saw Mickey, he hurriedly balled it up in one hand and shoved it in his pocket. “I know, I know,” he said, “I’ll take the whole thing off next time.”

“We’ve got enough for you,” Mickey said, hauling himself up the ladder. “You don’t need to reuse the one-time masks.”

“Then why aren’t you wearing one?” Ian asked sharply.

“Didn’t want to attract attention,” Mickey said.

“I thought as much.” Ian nodded at the blue jackets milling around the cargo ship. “Guessing you ran into them at the entrance? Fucking pussies. Can’t get their own shit, so they steal from local governments.”

Mickey thought wryly that the local governments were hardly the helpless victims Ian was making them out to be. “Pretty sure they cut a deal with our local council,” he pointed out. “Last I heard, they were doing a 70/30 split.”

“Fucking vultures,” Ian said feelingly. He turned to look at Mickey, concerned. “How long’s it been since you got a new shipment?” he asked. “One that didn’t get seized by FEMA?”

“I’ve got a few pallets stuck in Davenport right now.”

“So Miguel cut and ran?”

“Like a little bitch,” Mickey confirmed.

“Border patrol’s pretty strict,” Ian said, but he didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. “You sure you can make it over and back?”

“Yeah. I was gonna head over and buy like three new freezers anyway. We’re just gonna hide the masks inside the freezers. Border patrol’s gonna think we’re just trying to save on sales tax.”

Ian paused mid-bite, surprised. “Three freezers? Why?”

Mickey shrugged. “Svetlana called, said they needed an extra one for the next lockdown. Fiona put in an order as well, so I thought we should get one too, cut down on grocery runs and all that shit.”

“You wanna get _us_ a freezer,” Ian said, eyebrows shooting to his hairline. “You really think Marolf’s gonna let us off easy, huh?”

Mickey didn’t feel confident about that all, because Marolf was one wily bitch, but her her husband was immunocompromised and she just didn’t rank high enough to get supplies from the council. Mickey was her lifeline, and she fucking knew it, and if Ian got sent off to Fucksville, USA? They’d end up slow roasting last year’s masks in the oven and hoping for the best.

“Look,” he finally said, “even if you get drafted, it’s like what? One year max? We can do that in our sleep.”

“Fiona’s a girl, and Lip got lucky,” Ian countered. “There’s no guarantee they’ll let me come back early. Say I get sent to a farm and they put me in a dorm. Or hell, they just ask me to live on the farm. What are you gonna do then? Follow me there? Bunk with me in a twin bed in a farm full of rednecks?”

“Yes!” Mickey snapped. “That’s _exactly_ what I promised to do the _last_ time we had this conversation a week ago. The fuck’s your problem?”

“My problem is that I want _better_ for you!” Ian shouted back. He brought his fist down on the metal container with a loud _clang_ , and Mickey had to grip the top of the ladder to keep from flinching. The dock workers standing nearby stopped to stare at them. “Fuck, _fuck,_ I’m sorry,” Ian muttered, nodding at the workers as if to say he had his temper back under control.

“I want better for you too,” Mickey hissed, after the workers had gone back to unloading their container. “Not my fault you wanna martyr yourself. Tell Debs to strap on a pair and get a job in a factory that _isn’t_ a five minute walk away.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter where Debbie works, alright? They have it out for the Gallaghers. They’d have it out for the Milkoviches too, except they don’t have anyone they can threaten you with. And that’s a good thing, Mickey! Fuck, you’re free right now and you’re just gonna throw that away?”

“Throw away — the fuck am I throwing away? I told you before, I _am_ free! What we have _makes_ me free, okay? That’s never changed for me!”

Ian fell silent.

Mickey seethed. “I swear to God, Ian, if you’re going to break up with me again for my own good—”

“I’m not,” Ian said quickly. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Not again.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m not putting up with that shit again,” Mickey said, wanting to sound vicious, but the threat rang hollow. He was never any good in a fight with Ian; anything he said always came out panicked and weak and halting. Ian could probably hear how frightened he’d been; _Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher’s little bitch_ , he thought to himself bitterly. Not a word of a lie.

“Hey,” Ian said, softer, “Mickey, look at me.”

Mickey didn’t want to look at him. He felt like he might want to yell at Ian for a change; he had a shit ton of things he wanted to say to Ian, but they all got stuck in his throat. Ian was fucking amazing at wrecking Mickey like that; he’d be in a mood, and then he’d snip at Mickey, and then Mickey would snap back, and then Ian would open fire and leave Mickey smashed. He wasn’t good for anything now but running. “I gotta go,” he said, still too shakily for his liking. “I’ll meet you at your house.”

“Fiona’s house,” Ian corrected gently. He looked regretful, but he didn’t stop Mickey from getting up. “I have to get back to work too,” he said. “But just — look, just let me finish what I want to say.”

“Alright,” Mickey said without sitting back down. 

“If Marolf does try to send me off to a farm tonight, I want you to think carefully before you volunteer to come with me. I’m not trying to dump you —” he grabbed Mickey’s arm quickly when Mickey started reaching for the ladder — “I’m just trying to do the right thing here, okay? You have your brothers, Yev. You have a life here, and you don’t need to give it up to feed pigs just to keep me around.”

“So you want me to just drive up on the weekends?” Mickey asked, voice flat.

“If you want,” Ian said, sounding just as miserable as Mickey felt.

It was a very sweet, very sincere offer. It was also fucking stupid, stupid enough that Mickey had to sit back down. “Why do you keep assuming that I _want_ to live in Chicago?” he demanded.

Ian stared at him. “You grew up here.”

“You did too,” Mickey said. “But you used to want to get out, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Ian said, “but that was back then. Now the entire country’s gone to shit. Might as well stay where we grew up, you know? People know who we are around here. You really wanna come out again in redneck central?”

“You think people won’t know we’re fucking if I drop by for a weekly conjugal visit? Christ, Ian, they’re dumb, not blind.”

“We can be discreet.”

“Or we can be out,” Mickey said. He sighed and got to his feet. “We need to get back to work,” he said, rooting around in his pocket until he found a new tri-layer mask. He motioned for Ian to get up, then leaned over to loop the straps around Ian’s ears. “Let’s just deal with one crisis at a time, okay?” he begged softly, drawing back a little to meet Ian’s eyes.

Reluctantly, Ian dipped his head in acquiescence.

“Thank you,” Mickey said, even though he didn’t put much stock in Ian’s promises. He patted Ian’s cheek twice. “I’ll see you at four.”

\--

Mickey’s headache was in full swing by the time Iggy dropped him off in front of the Gallagher house, and he fully blamed Ian for it, not that he’d ever let on. Here was the thing: he fucking _hated_ it when Ian started with the break-up talk, and even though he hadn’t really this time, _let’s be weekend fuckbuddies_ came close enough that it fucked Mickey up all the same. Whenever Ian started with that bullshit, Mickey’s heart would start to pound faster and faster, until all he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears; he’d get lightheaded, like something was cutting off his air supply, and he’d get stupidly desperate to fix whatever was upsetting Ian.

This was not something Mickey could fix. The knowledge sat in his stomach like a lead weight, around his head like a tightening vice.

He dreaded walking into the house. He could hear the Gallaghers screaming bloody murder at each other from where he was standing, and he was torn between slipping in to find Ian, and slamming his fist down on the dining table and telling all of them to shut the fuck up, because what good did it do to tear each other to pieces _right_ before Marolf showed up to really do some damage?

He ended up doing neither. He had Franny shoved into his arms the moment he walked through the door, freeing up Debbie to do battle with Fiona, who was yelling at her to put a lid on it and just take her baby upstairs.

“Just do what your sister says,” Mickey said when Debbie turned to him for assistance. “Also, you can’t just shove your kid at me as soon as I walk in, the fuck were you thinking? I’m about as contaminated as it gets.”

“Since when did you start caring about hygiene?” Debbie scoffed, but she took her daughter back and stomped up the stairs.

“Since there’s a fucking virus going around killing people!” Mickey shouted after her. He turned to Fiona, who was glaring daggers at Debbie’s receding back. “Where’s Ian?” he asked, feeling ready to do some yelling himself.

“Upstairs showering,” she said, sounding bone-tired. She perked up a little when she saw the suitcase of PPE he had in tow. “Is that for Marolf?”

“Yeah,” he said, feeling just as exhausted. “You think it’s gonna work?”

“I’ll kick in two thousand bucks if it helps,” she said. “Do you think that lacks finesse?”

“Yeah, but Marolf doesn’t give a fuck about finesse,” he said. “Still, you better save that for Carl. He turned eighteen a few months back, yeah?”

“They’ve already got him collecting garbage,” she said bitterly.

Mickey gestured at the stack of bribes they’d put together as an offering. “Yeah, well, it can get a whole lot worse.”

He regretted what he said instantly, because Fiona looked like she might cry, but before he could go grab Lip, the verbal floodgates opened. “This is all Frank’s fault,” she fumed, the fury just gushing out now that she had a sympathetic ear. “The whole town has it out for him, and where the fuck is he? Hiding out in some rich bitch’s house. Meanwhile his kids are on the chopping block because he owes _everyone_ in this godforsaken shithole money, and it doesn’t even matter if we can pay off his debts, because money isn’t worth shit anymore!”

“He found another Sheila?”

“A lot richer. And probably blind to boot.”

“How does he do it?” Mickey wondered idly. 

“A metric ton of vodka and gin,” Ian said from the top of the stairs. He came loping down the steps before stopping dead in front of the suitcase and the stacks of cash. “Is that—” He flushed, unable to get out what Mickey supposed were the words _for me_.

“That’s for you and Carl,” Fiona said. “Listen, I’m gonna go grab everyone. If Marolf comes early, the refreshments are in the kitchen.”

Ian looked at Mickey, wide-eyed. “Is that what it takes?” he asked, shell-shocked.

“That’s nothing,” Mickey said. “My dad used to pay them off with guns.”

“The government needs black market guns?” Ian asked incredulously.

“The _council_ needs them,” Mickey corrected. “Big difference. Anyway, Iggy still pays them off every year. That’s what keeps them off our backs.”

Ian looked stunned. “You never said.”

“Yeah, well, you said you didn’t want to know the sordid details,” Mickey snapped. He bit his lip, because he didn’t _want_ to bark at Ian, but he had a raging headache he was trying to keep hidden from everyone, and he was just so goddamn tired of having to sanitize reality as it happened in addition to every fucking thing he laid hands on.

“What sordid details?” Carl asked, having been herded up from the basement by Fiona and Lip.

“It’s not sordid,” Fiona said firmly. “It’s _necessary_.”

“Exactly,” Mickey agreed.

“I never said that,” Ian said, which was true only in the literal sense, because that had totally been the spirit of the speech he’d given Mickey a couple years ago, when he’d said he was trying to be _better_ and that this — all of _this_ , all of the Milkovich-related fuckery — wasn’t his life anymore.

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Mickey said, because the last thing he wanted was to fight with Ian and fuck with his head when their future was on the line. “Can we just focus, please? Marolf’s gonna be here any minute now, so let’s go over our strategy one more time.”

“It’s just bribing her, right?” Carl asked. “That’s not exactly complicated.”

“It’s _very_ complicated,” Lip interjected, “because we want her to sympathize with us, and throwing cash around just makes us look like assholes.”

“No, it just makes us look desperate,” Mickey said. “And that’s _exactly_ what we are, if she won’t budge on making Ian a farm boy.”

There was a sharp rap on the door. Everyone in the room fell silent; Debbie, still holding Frannie, came pounding down the stairs, mouthing soundlessly, “She’s here?”

Ian gave Mickey a long, wordless look, then moved forward to open the door. Mickey followed behind, head throbbing violently; he resisted the urge to pinch his eyes shut, and forced a smile at Marolf. She smiled back, and it didn’t make him feel better at all. He’d never done well with HR people, and that was exactly what Carol Marolf had been in a past life, an exemplary HR drone that had been scooped from a lackluster school district to run the temp agency from hell. Blond bob, navy blazer, black flats, she looked about as soulless as they came.

“Milkovich,” she greeted him dryly. “So you’re here too this time.”

“Just trying to bulk up the negotiating team,” Lip said evenly, just as Ian said, “He’s family.”

She swept in with a brief nod at Mickey and stopped in the middle of the room. “Look,” she said, tucking her clutch under her arm, “I have three more stops to make today, so let’s skip the negotiating and cut to the chase. I can keep Ian in Chicago, but it’s not going to be at the docks. Now—” she gestured at the suitcase — “is that for me?”

Lip’s mouth snapped shut and he glanced at Mickey, as if to say, _you take the reins._

Lip, Mickey decided, was a pussy. “It’s yours,” he confirmed before she could grow impatient.

“Mm. But you have enough for yourselves?” she asked, and her concern sounded sincere enough that it set off warning bells in Mickey’s head.

“Yeah, we do,” Ian said warily. “Why?”

“The city needs EMTs,” she said, and Mickey’s stomach wrenched painfully.

“No,” Fiona said immediately, “no, no, what are the other options?”

Ian put a warning hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “I never took the exam,” he said, which wasn’t a no.

“You have the training. We can waive the exam under extraordinary circumstances,” Marolf said briskly. “Again, I’m not here to negotiate. If you take the job, you’ll report to the station first thing next week. If you decide the risk is too high, I hear that the farms are hard up for workers too.”

Ian caught Mickey’s eyes, and Mickey knew that he’d already decided.

Marolf knew it too. “You have my card,” she said to him, not unkindly. “I’m giving you one day to talk it over. Give me a call tomorrow and let me know your final decision.” She stepped around Debbie and her baby and knelt down next to the suitcase. “I’m only taking one box,” she said, sifting through all the different kinds of masks to find the 3M N95s. “You’re out of the 1860s?”

“Only 8210s left,” Mickey said mechanically.

“All right then,” she said. She opened her oversized clutch and slipped the whole box in, then straightened and beamed at them. “I’ll be waiting for your call, Ian,” she said brightly. “Talk to you soon.”


	3. the distant and invisible interests of distant and invisible masters

Ian’s first day on the job, he’d watched a shipping container crash down on the dock. The screams had pierced the air, and then cut off so abruptly that there had been no question as to whether the men below had made it or not.

They’d died on impact, all three of them.

“Shit happens,” his supervisor had said, apathetic to his core.

Shit happened. So things went.

He’d never told Mickey about the accident, because what was the point? Mickey knew accidents happened. He’d been so scared of losing body parts in a factory that Terry Milkovich had shaken down an old high school classmate for a job in tarring roofs; he must have had an inkling of what went on at the docks, which was why Ian had never stopped him from dropping by on his lunch breaks, even when the virus had been tearing through the Southside.

He was under no delusions that EMS was safer than the docks; in fact, he was pretty fucking sure it was the other way around, but at least working as an EMT would make him _feel_ something. Mickey liked to joke that he was an adrenaline junkie, and Ian would never admit it out loud, because after everything, he still wanted to be the _stable_ one, but—

He wanted it. He wanted adrenaline coursing through his veins, blood pounding in his ears, heart jackhammering so hard in a panic that he’d know without a shadow of a doubt that he _did_ give a fuck about saving people. He’d become so numb to bloody accidents, so resigned to getting immolated on the altar of the Dow Jones, and now, finally, here was a job that could make conscription bearable, a job that had him saving lives instead of stock portfolios, a job where he could be a real fucking hero.

“I want to take the job,” he said to Mickey on their way home.

“Of course you do,” Mickey scoffed. “You didn’t mind getting your ass shot off in some ‘stan, you’re not gonna balk at a 10% CFR. You’re Ian Gallagher, Southside’s very own hero, who the fuck am I to question your judgment?”

Ian stopped in his tracks. “You’re pissed,” he said cautiously.

“No shit, of course I’m pissed,” Mickey said sharply. “Do you know _why_ they can’t fill the EMS jobs? It’s ‘cause the EMTs are dropping like flies. They have to do CPR, maybe even intubation, and the whole time the patient’s just spewing bodily fluids at them — they’re as fucked as it gets, even if they’re wearing N95s.”

“They have a ninety percent chance of surviving, maybe even higher. The CFR’s probably off, and we don’t even know the IFR.”

“Don’t need to,” Mickey said. “Everyone in this neighborhood knows someone who died last year. The real CFR’s only gonna be higher.”

“Okay, even so — someone’s gotta do the job, right? I’m young, healthy; I have the best odds of beating this thing.”

“So you’re volunteering as tribute?”

“Why the fuck not?” Ian stopped and spread his arms, gestured expansively at the neighborhood. “You see any better candidates?”

“You’ll have to stop seeing your family,” Mickey said, stopping too. He didn’t sound mad anymore; he sounded off, almost indifferent, like he was talking about someone else. “You’ll basically be quarantined when you’re off work.”

“More time for us, right?” Ian quipped. Mickey didn’t laugh and Ian faltered. “I can live in the RV if it makes you feel safer,” he offered.

“Don’t start,” Mickey said, not quite bitterly but getting close. “You know I wouldn’t stand for that.”

“I’m not trying to _guilt_ you, Mickey. I just don’t want you feeling unsafe in your own home.”

“Well, that boat sailed a long time ago and it ain’t coming back.”

“Well, shit, Mickey, is there anything I _can_ do to make you feel better about this?”

“Probably not,” Mickey said frankly, and the admission came like a backhand to the face, sent Ian reeling.

Mickey looked wrecked and furious by turns, and a little shell-shocked too, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just said to Ian, but the words were out there now and Ian had to react. He took a deep breath, hoped like fuck his voice came out steady, tried to take control: “It’s not like the docks were safer, Mick. Accidents happened all the fucking time. At least this way, I’d be doing something _good_.”

He had to understand. He was doing work that _mattered_ ; he wasn’t wasting his life like Ian was, loading and unloading the most nonessential shit ever invented, boxes and boxes of golf equipment, fucking _luxury_ rugs and heirloom dressers.

Mickey just looked gutted. “Don’t do that,” he said, recoiling when Ian reached out for him.

“Sorry,” Ian said quickly, dropping his hands to his side.

“That’s not— fuck, that’s not what I meant. I meant stop lubing up when life tries to fuck you in the ass. At least have the decency to agree that it fucking sucks.”

“In my defense, Mickey, you’re the one who’s always telling me how much a dry fuck hurts.”

The joke fizzled out like flat soda.

“It does suck,” Ian said gently, when it became clear that Mickey wasn’t going to say anything back. “So I’d do a lot to make it suck less.” He put a hesitant arm around Mickey’s shoulders. “Let’s talk about this more at home, okay? We can make a list of pros and cons, and I’ll sleep on it, I promise.”

Mickey tried to shrug him off, but Ian hung on like a barnacle. “Like you’d listen to me,” Mickey said finally, giving up and settling for elbowing Ian in the ribs instead. “I’m like Cassandra, or whatever that chick’s called.”

The plaintive note in his voice wasn’t lost on Ian. “Don’t be so fatalistic, Mick,” he said, wishing he had something better to offer.

“The word you’re looking for is realistic,” Mickey grumbled, but he lost some of his stiffness and settled against Ian’s side, warm and pliant.

“You still mad?” Ian asked quietly.

“I’m not mad,” Mickey said, but he wouldn’t meet Ian’s eyes.

“I’ll wear PPE,” Ian promised. “Goggles, N95s, gloves. I’ll quit on the spot if they don’t let me. We have enough, right?” He gestured at the suitcase Mickey was towing behind him.

“Of course we do,” Mickey said. He looked at the suitcase and bit his lip. “I gotta stop by the station,” he said at last. “Take this home for me, will you? I can’t be seen with the goods.”

\--

Mickey came home late that night and he didn’t bother with dinner; he collapsed face first into the bed after showering and pulled a pillow over his head when Ian tried to ask him questions.

“I saved you a plate,” Ian said, nudging his shoulder softly. “I can heat it up and bring it back in here if you want.”

Mickey muttered something unintelligible, and when Ian nudged him again, he announced, “I’ll puke if you bring food in here.”

“What’s up with you?” Ian asked in surprise, and when Mickey didn’t answer, he wormed a hand under the pillow to feel Mickey’s forehead.

“It’s just a headache,” Mickey said, batting Ian’s hand away and clamping down on the edges of the pillow. “Look, can you just turn off the lights?”

“You’ve been getting a lot of those lately,” Ian said, worry coiling in his stomach. “Maybe you should go see a doctor.”

“I’m fine,” Mickey mumbled into the pillow. He was horribly pale and far too subdued for it to sound remotely convincing. When he realized that Ian was still hovering over him, he added, “It’ll go away in the morning. I just need six hours of quiet and then I’m good as new. You know the drill.”

Ian did know the drill, but he was absolute shit at handling headaches, because there was nothing to do but wait it out. In his defense, Gallaghers didn’t _do_ headaches; they had never been good at understanding pain that wasn’t self-inflicted, and they got over hangovers through drinking and partying. Mickey’s headaches were the kind that required quiet lie-downs.

“I mean, our house is usually pretty quiet,” Mandy had said when Ian had expressed his sheer disbelief that Mickey had managed to make it to adulthood in the Milkovich household. “Neglect’s gotta be good for something, right?”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Ian didn’t want to be _neglectful_. The Milkoviches might have thought it fine to let their brother wait out a headache alone, but Ian was supposed to be better than that. He was supposed to fix things, offer comfort, and generally make Mickey’s life _better_ by being in it. “I’ll get you an icepack,” he decided.

The lights were on in the kitchen, where he found Iggy digging into the plate of food he’d left for Mickey. Iggy was thoroughly unabashed to be caught red-handed; he pointed at Ian with his fork and said around his mouth of food, “You’re a better cook than Mickey.”

“He’s good enough,” Ian said. He opened the fridge and rummaged through the crisper drawer for the bag of peas he remembered seeing. “Hey,” he said to Iggy after he’d looked through the refrigerator twice, “you know where the peas went?”

“Yup. Sacrificed them for a good cause,” Iggy said, gesturing to his face, where he was sporting the beginnings of a shiner. “Didn’t think you’d be wanting them back.”

Ian closed the door with a groan. “The fuck happened to you?”

Iggy scowled. “The new competition,” he said, looking positively homicidal.

“What competition?” Ian asked, frowning. “I thought Mickey ran this town.”

“He could, if he’d get his head out of his ass.” Iggy stabbed his potatoes viciously. “He’s forgotten everything Dad taught us.”

Mickey had a better head for business than Terry Milkovich in his prime, but he was also decidedly less violent — delivering beatdowns required getting into people’s faces, and Mickey didn’t care for getting breathed on.

“You know you’re supposed to be physical distancing, right?” Ian said, without much hope that Iggy would listen.

Iggy sneered. “Do I look like a pussy to you?”

Ian switched tactics. “You know, we leave Frank chained to the basement in my house,” he said conversationally.

Mickey would never allow that to happen, but Iggy had the decency to look quelled all the same. “I was only trying to be a good brother,” he sulked. “Take shit off his plate and all that.”

“Well, it didn’t work. He’s laid up with a headache right now.”

Ian wasn’t exactly looking for a show of brotherly concern, but he would have been sorely disappointed if he had been, because Iggy was supremely unconcerned. “He gets those all the time,” Iggy said dismissively. “He takes after our mom. He throw up yet?”

“No,” Ian snapped. “Although he might if I don’t get back with an icepack and some Advil.”

Iggy looked stumped. “We’re rationing the Advil. And we don’t have icepacks, but, uh.” He got up and rummaged through all of the drawers until he found where Mickey kept the Ziploc bags. “You can scrape some ice off the top shelf of the freezer and put it in here,” he offered.

“Frost doesn’t hold up the same,” Ian said with a sigh, but he took a bag because it was better than nothing. “Hand me a spoon,” he ordered Iggy, and Iggy, their resident fuckwit, had to go through all the drawers again to find one.

“In case the ice doesn’t do the trick, I got something else for Mick,” Iggy said cheerfully, lounging in his chair as Ian went to town on the freezer shelves. “You guys wanted the blackout kind, right?” He reached beside him for a package and chucked it at Ian’s head.

It was a two-pack of curtains, still in their plastic packaging. Grommet-topped, black panels, cotton weave. “ _You_ bought this?” Ian asked, incredulous.

“Think of it as a hearty congratulations for talking that bitch around,” Iggy said sincerely. “Mickey would have been wasted feeding pigs.”

So Mickey had told him about the offer.

“Ah,” Ian said, not sure what to say. “Did he tell you for sure we weren’t going?”

“He said you got offered an EMT job.”

“And?”

“I stopped listening after that.”

Of course he had. “Well,” Ian said, “it’s not set in stone yet. I don’t know what Mickey told you, but there’s still a good chance we might end up on a farm. Mickey really doesn’t want me to become an EMT.”

Iggy was utterly appalled. “And you’re gonna listen to him?” he demanded. “It’s not like a farm’s gonna be any safer.”

Ian had privately thought the same thing, but— “It is, in a way,” Ian said. “Lower viral loads.”

Iggy was staring at him like he’d lost his mind. “I thought you’d jump at this new job,” he finally said. “What with your hero complex and all.”

Ian tucked the curtains under his arm. “I don’t have a hero complex.”

Iggy snorted. “Please. That’s probably why you were attracted to my brother in the first place. He’s high-strung and he’s got daddy issues up the wazoo — you probably thought he was a walking, talking version of that Bonnie Tyler song.”

“I did not!” Ian said indignantly. “And fuck you, Mickey’s not high-strung, okay? He’s stressed. We can’t all be like you and get stoned every night.”

“Well, I’m stressed too,” Iggy said, voice deliberately mild. “ _Because_ my brother’s a goddamn idiot and his boyfriend’s fucking enabling him.”

“I don’t _enable_ him—”

“Then sack up and make your own decisions! He’s lost his fucking mind and it’s your turn to be the sane one!”

Ian would have decked him if he weren’t Mickey’s brother.

The conversation had gone off the rails and was just begging to be put out of its misery. Clearly Iggy had the same thought, because he shut the freezer door for Ian and handed him a towel. “Alright,” he said, suddenly pleasant again. “Good talk. And remember — don’t be a pussy.”

He clapped Ian bracingly on the shoulder and left the kitchen. Ian watched him leave, still idly wondering how much domestic violence Mickey would tolerate. _Don’t be a pussy_. He sighed and wrapped the towel around the bag of ice. It would have been sound advice, if it hadn’t been such a blatant attempt to keep Mickey in Chicago so he could continue making decisions for _Iggy_.

They clearly hadn’t given Mickey the peace and quiet he needed. He was still awake when Ian got back, and he’d wrapped his pillow around his head. “What were you guys yelling about?” he asked, glaring balefully at Ian with one eye.

“Nothing,” Ian said shortly, then winced. “Nothing important,” he said, this time trying for some of that fucking sensitivity Mickey was always talking about. “Your brother bought us new curtains. Thought they might come in handy since you’re sensitive to light and all.” He sat down on the bed and lightly tugged at the pillow. “I brought you some ice if you want.”

He managed to pry the pillow out of Mickey’s grip and set it upright against the wall, derailing Mickey’s attempts to suffocate himself. Mickey made a wordless noise of protest, but he sat up eventually and took the makeshift icepack. “I could hear you guys, you know,” he said, propping himself up against his pillows. “Please tell me Iggy’s not fucking with the competition.”

“So you know there’s a new guy in town?”

“Only because Iggy won’t shut up about the dude.”

“He’s just trying to be a good brother,” Ian said, and he was surprised to find that he actually meant it. “He was really upset when he heard that you wanted to move to a farm.”

Mickey sighed. He pressed his icepack to his forehead in silence and watched Ian take down the curtain rod. “You’d let him come with us if we moved out of state?” he asked at length.

“We’d keep him chained in the basement, right?” Ian said, grinning. “But more seriously, wouldn’t you rather bring Svetlana and Yev?”

Mickey didn’t answer immediately. Ian turned to look at him, and saw that he was looking down, lost in thought. He was beginning to regret his question when Mickey finally said, “They’re better off staying with Kevin and Vee.”

Ian paused. “But you’d miss them, wouldn’t you?” he asked over his shoulder.

“I see where this conversation is headed and I’m putting a stop to it right now,” Mickey said dryly. “Let’s talk tomorrow morning, yeah? You take Iggy’s advice and I’ll kick your ass.”

So he had heard everything Iggy had said in the kitchen.

“For the record, I don’t think you’re high strung,” Ian told him, and Mickey huffed out a laugh that turned into a groan.

“He was the one flipping the fuck out today,” he said tiredly. “Once this wave really gets going, we’re really gonna have to handcuff him to the pipes or something.”

“I’ll get the basement ready,” Ian said. “Got a free day tomorrow with nothing better to do.”

Mickey smiled faintly. “Don’t you have to turn in your resignation?”

“Yeah. But then I’m a free man.”

“For one day.”

“I’d have more days if I worked as an EMT,” Ian said. “I’d get four days off after a 48-hour shift. That’s like a long weekend every week — I’d be able to do more shit around the house, go on supply runs with you, maybe even home-school Yev.”

A long silence followed. Finally, Mickey set the icepack down on the nightstand. “You know I can’t actually _make_ you do shit, right?” he said tonelessly. “You don’t need my permission to take the job.”

“But you’d be pissed if I didn’t discuss it with you beforehand.”

“We don’t — Ian, we never _discuss_ anything, okay? You usually tell me what you’re going to do and I have to decide if I’m okay with it.”

“That’s _not_ true. Mickey, I’m _trying_ to discuss this right now—”

“After I asked, and you agreed, to talk about this tomorrow.”

“I never agreed to that.”

He regretted those words almost instantly. Mickey’s eyes widened in hurt for a split second, and then his expression blanked. “Fine,” he said, and this time Ian could hear the anger in his voice.

Mickey sat up straight and groped for his phone on the bedside table. “Let’s discuss this. I already know your arguments — you like the schedule, you hate feeding pigs, you like saving people. You think it’s the right thing to do and it makes you feel like you have control over the pandemic, like you’re showing the virus who’s the boss. Now let me give you my argument — you _don’t_ have control over the pandemic, and once you’re exposed, the chances of our families getting through this alive drop below twenty percent. Do you know what a 10% CFR means? It means there’s a 90% chance you’ll live. You’re young, sure, but you’re getting exposed to insane viral loads _while_ you’re sleep deprived, and don’t forget, you _smoke_. There are fifteen of us — sixteen if we count Frank. That’s .9 to the sixteenth power, which is—” he punched in the numbers on his phone — “18.5%. That’s the probability of coming out the other end without a single death in both our families, including Kevin and Vee. And that’s a _generous_ model, because we’re assuming the deaths are uncorrelated, when in reality, I’m pretty fucking sure families get wiped out _together_.”

There was nothing Ian could say to that.

“You wouldn’t be able to see your family,” Mickey continued, less stridently. He set his phone back on the table. “I wouldn’t be able to have Yev over. Iggy would have to move into the RV.”

“Or I could move into the RV,” Ian said quietly.

Mickey stared at him. “Do whatever the fuck you want, Ian,” he said at last. “I’m not going to stop you.”

\--

He took the job.

Ian might be shit at math, but he also had a model, and since it was a fuckton more complicated than Mickey’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, he didn’t have numbers. He didn’t need numbers. All he needed was a guarantee that medical workers’ families got a little more leeway with the council and law enforcement.

“That should make your life a little easier,” he said, watching from the doorway as Mickey shoved his brother’s shirts into a pillowcase. “Iggy said your competitor’s charmed all the cops into buying from him, right? Well, now he won’t be able to sic them on you.”

Mickey didn’t say a single word.

“I saw the guy yesterday when I went to pick up my last paycheck. He had a whole gang with him, and they were picking up a shipment of masks right in front of the FEMA guys. Crazy, right? I mean, you spent all day in Davenport figuring out how to smuggle your goods over state lines, and this guy just waltzed off with a shipping container’s worth of masks and cleaning products.”

No answer. Mickey upended a plastic crate and dumped the pillowcase in it.

“The good news is, Marolf says you might be able to negotiate with the FEMA officials now that you have partial immunity. They also gave me a paycheck advance, so you can use that to buy more stuff from California. Or stock up on groceries. Whatever you prefer.”

Mickey stuck Iggy’s bong in there too.

“So, you’re giving me the silent treatment now?”

Silence again.

“Will you at least _look_ at me?” 

Mickey straightened and shot Ian a truly venomous glare. “I’m banishing my brother to the RV,” he said, voice trembling with rage, “and you’re asking me to be _happy_ about what you did?”

“And I keep telling you that I should be the one moving into the RV!” Ian said, trying not to shout. “That way you’d still have your brother and Yev could still come visit.”

“So you’re telling me I should let you work for forty-eight hours straight, then come home and spend four days trapped in a tin can, then go back to work to get coughed on for another forty-eight hours? You can’t live like that, Ian. You’d get sick on your second shift.”

“Then at least I’d get it over with!”

“Until the next strain comes out and you drop dead from ADE.”

“So what’s your plan?” Ian asked, defeated. “Stay mad at me _until_ I drop dead?”

“Don’t ask me for a timeline,” Mickey said, rolling up Iggy’s Hustlers. “I’ll get over it when I get over it.”

“I’m not going to apologize for making sure you don’t have to worry about pigs, or homophobic rednecks, or being stuck in fucking _Wisconsin_. Do you know how fucking stressed I was when I thought I’d have to convince you that feeding pigs was _fun_? Of fucking course I jumped at the chance to stay — fuck me for wanting you to have a life!”

“Newsflash, Gallagher, I _can’t_ have a life when I spend all my time worrying about you!”

“Then stop worrying! My God, Mickey, you haven’t done _anything_ but worry since the virus mutated. Aren’t you sick of it?”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Mickey said, pointing the bundle of skin mags at Ian accusingly. “Remember a few days ago when _you_ were the one telling me to stay inside?”

The conversation was going around and around in circles, Ian thought despairingly. He could tell Mickey that he’d been chiefly worried about law enforcement arresting Mickey, then point out that Mickey didn’t have to worry about that particular risk anymore, but that would just bring them back to the start of their argument.

“I was worried about you,” he said, trying for some perspective. “You get that, right? For fuck’s sake, if there’s anyone should understand, it’s you. I was scared you’d get locked up again when I was at work, and that was my way of trying to control the situation.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.” Mickey kicked the crate moodily. “I’m gonna be under quarantine as long as you’re working for EMS.” His eyes widened as the full implications of isolation struck him. “Fuck, I’m gonna have to do runs without Iggy.”

“I can come with you,” Ian said immediately. “I have four days off at a time now. I can go get the medical supplies with you, and Iggy can focus on his gun-running shit.”

He might as well have asked Mickey for a naked roll in a cactus field, for all the enthusiasm he generated. “If you think running masks and shit is all that different from running drugs and guns, you’re gonna be in for a hell of a surprise,” Mickey said, making a face.

“What? I don’t think that,” Ian said in surprise. “That’s not what I meant—” He suddenly recalled what Mickey had said back in the Gallagher house, his strange insistence that Ian cherry-picked parts Mickey’s life to accept and made him censor the rest. He’d thought Mickey had simply been in a snit and had been casting around for things to say, because Mickey _could_ be high-strung, no point in denying it, and he’d still been angry with Ian after their argument on the docks; it was sobering to think that Mickey had actually _meant_ it.

“What _did_ you mean?” Mickey asked, sounding genuinely curious. He took a seat on Iggy’s bed and gazed up at Ian expectantly.

Ian tried to collect his thoughts. “I just meant,” he said, and then he caught the knowing look on Mickey’s face and scrapped all of the explanations he had planned. “Look, I don’t give a shit about the _sordid_ details,” he said firmly. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask Mandy. I almost had to help her hide a dead body and I’d have done it if things really came down to it. I’d do the same for you. I’d do a lot more, actually.”

Mickey seemed to turn this over in his head as he wrapped up the rest of Iggy’s belongings in his blanket.

“Well?” Ian asked when the silence got too oppressive.

“Well, what?”

“Can I come with you? Are you still mad at me? I don’t know, Mickey, just fucking say something.”

Mickey eyed him critically. “Fine,” he decided after a few agonizing seconds. “You can come.”

“Are you a little less mad?” Ian asked hopefully.

He sat down next to Mickey, who immediately dug out his pack of smokes, as if Ian’s proximity was too much for him to handle. Ian obligingly lit the cigarette for him and watched as he took a deep drag.

Mickey exhaled. He still looked tense and unhappy, but he said, “Fuck it. I guess I can’t stay mad at you if you’re headed off to the trenches.”

“That would be extremely demoralizing,” Ian agreed.

“ _Demoralizing_ ,” Mickey scoffed, shaking his head. He made an aborted gesture at the mess on the floor and then covered his eyes with his hand. “Well, Gallagher, I live to please.”


	4. our winters are very long here, very long and very monotonous

They did not go on runs.

Instead, they settled into a dreary routine. Ian would leave for work and Mickey would spend the next forty-eight hours rattling around the house, waiting for Ian to come home. Sometimes he’d sit on the stoop and talk to Iggy across the lawn, but Iggy’s workload had doubled after he’d taken over deliveries and he didn’t always have time for Mickey. It was a surreal experience, as if they’d regressed twenty years and he was a chubby five-year-old again, toddling after his brother and wailing for attention.

Mickey was coming to the grim realization that he wasn’t getting out of quarantine with his dignity intact.

He was slowly turning into Sheila Jackson, which was exactly as depressing as it sounded. He’d spent most of the day glancing out the window, wondering when Miguel was going to get here with his order, and when he realized that he was actually looking forward to seeing the squirrely bastard, he decided to call Iggy again, self-respect be damned.

His brother picked up on the first ring. “Miguel taking his sweet time?” Iggy asked knowingly.

“He texted me at 3 AM with an ETA of 8 hours and it’s already four in the afternoon.”

“You said it yourself, you should know better than to expect punctuality in this line of business.”

“Yeah. But Miguel’s usually not half bad. At least, he’s not _that_ bad when he’s not running his ass away from the border patrol.”

Iggy hummed thoughtfully. “You try calling him?”

“Of course I did,” Mickey said. He’d called at 10 AM, then again at lunch, and once more an hour ago. “Asshole won’t answer.”

“Well, what did you order?”

“Some reactant for the university labs and more of the KN95s. The good kind, 3M.”

“The one with the valves?”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause. “You’re keeping those for Gallagher, right?”

“Nope, selling those to Tony.” Mickey added crossly, “You told me I had to get him the good shit, so here I am, making good on my promise.”

“Good, good,” Iggy said absently. “Well, I get back in an hour or so. If Miguel still hasn’t shown his ugly mug, I’ll go look for him.”

Iggy got home two hours later, just as Mickey was getting dinner started, and by then Mickey was seriously beginning to contemplate the possibility that Miguel had gotten himself arrested.

“Hey,” Iggy said, poking his head through the door. “Smells good in here. Can you fix me up a plate?”

“The fuck are you doing in here?” Mickey hissed. “Go back to the RV, Iggy, this is a fucking plague house right now.”

“This has always been a plague house,” Iggy said, but he backed up a few steps all the same. “Miguel call yet?”

“No,” Mickey said. “Hey, you think the cops got a hold of him?”

“Doubt it.” Iggy shrugged. “Even if they did, he wouldn’t snitch.”

“Right, like that’s what’s keeping me up at night.”

“You can share your immunity with him, right?”

“I don’t really think I _have_ immunity,” Mickey admitted. “Marolf sold Ian that bullshit and he was so eager to find a reason to stay that he just lapped it all up.”

“Well, you’re also selling shit to Markovich and he’s gotta be good for something,” Iggy said bracingly. “Gallagher’s coming back tonight, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then he can go bail out Miguel. If Miguel even needs to be bailed out.”

Iggy seemed to think everything was fucking copacetic now that Mickey was staying in Chicago for good, and Mickey only wished he could share his brother’s optimism. Ian had come home after his first shift pale-faced and shaken, and after a failed attempt to move into Mandy’s room, he’d told Mickey that he’d been right. His partner had been hacking up a lung for their whole shift, but he hadn’t qualified for sick leave because the CDC hadn’t come out with a new test yet.

As far as Mickey was concerned, the light Iggy kept thinking he saw at the end of the tunnel was just the oncoming train, and all three of them were going to end up roadkill.

He went back to chopping onions furiously and wondered why he was bothering to cook when nobody was around to eat it except for _Iggy_. He shouldn’t even be feeding Iggy, but it wasn’t like the RV was a great place for cooking, and if Iggy accidentally set it on fire, they’d have to move him down into the basement. Where there was no ventilation and a plethora of germs.

Mickey’s head hurt just thinking about the logistics.

His phone rang and he almost lost a finger in his rush to answer it.

Miguel’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Yo, Mick?”

“Where the fuck have you been?” Mickey demanded.

“Listen, you think you can be down at the Alibi in ten?”

“What? _No._ Didn’t I tell you that I’m under quarantine?”

“But, like, you’re not really sick, right?”

“This thing incubates up to fourteen days and Ian’s been exposed a hundred times over. You really want me to head down to a bar full of old farts and infect them all?

Miguel mulled this over. “Well,” he said after a while, “I figure the sound of a gun going off is less conspicuous in a crowded public space, but if you’re sure you have immunity from the cops, I can drive up to your place—”

“Why the fuck would there be gunshots?”

“Because I’m being tailed by a white van with no plates. Like, I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s that Northside prick, but he’s sporting frosted tips and that’s kinda his signature look, right? Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re about to rob me once I park, so you better choose where you want the shootout and you better choose quick.”

“ _Fuck_.” All the myriad ways of how things could go wrong went racing through Mickey’s head and then coalesced into one coherent thought: Iggy had been _right_. He pulled himself together as best as he could. “Alright, meet me at the back of the bar in _twenty_ ,” he ordered. “Don’t come earlier. You know where they park the delivery trucks?”

“That’s the _worst_ place ever to have a gunfight.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m not looking to have a shootout. Jesus Christ, you think we’re in a fucking western or something? Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna wait for my call — set your phone to vibrate so you’ll know when — and when you feel your phone buzz, you’ll park and you’ll give these fuckers what they want.”

There was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. “That’s 10k’s worth of merchandise we’re talking about, Mickey. You want me to just hand it to them?”

“They won’t get to keep the goods. Iggy and I are gonna do a little tailing ourselves.”

He hung up, turned off the stove and grabbed a mask, then went to bang on Iggy’s trailer door.

“Dinner?” Iggy called out hopefully.

“Grab your gun, Iggy, we’re gonna go put the fear of God into these Northside douchebags.”

The door opened, and Iggy smiled at him, slow and fierce. “Knew you’d see things my way.”

They took separate cars to the Alibi. Iggy raced ahead in the Corolla he’d extorted from some schmuck and Mickey followed close behind in their pickup, a gun under his belt and a bat under his seat. He caught his brother’s eyes in the Corolla’s rearview mirror, saw Iggy’s savage delight at the prospect of skull bashing and felt sick to his stomach when he tried to feel the same.

He’d gotten soft.

He’d gotten complacent; he’d thought that he could get away with letting another guy carve out his own corner in the market, simply because it had been the _right_ thing to do. And maybe it had been and it still was, but none of that mattered, because Terry Milkovich had also been right when he’d said that the laws of the jungle would always prevail and that the strong would crush the weak. There was no such thing as sportsmanship or good will among competitors; everything in the world was always trying to kill everything else, and Mickey would do well to remember that.

He took a deep breath when they reached the bar.

“Iggy,” he said into his phone, “I need you to go around the block and park right in front of the alley. Don’t block the entrance, but you need to get close enough to follow the van after it takes off.”

“Why the fuck are we letting them take off?”

“Because I plan on opening fire and I’m not stupid enough to do it in public. For fuck’s sake, Iggy, do I really need to explain this to you like you’re five?”

If they opened fire behind the Alibi today, they’d shut Kevin’s bar down for good. He’d have to get down on his knees and beg if he wanted to keep it open, and he’d have to do it with everyone watching, jeering, like _he_ was the worst Canaryville had to offer. It had been fucking horrible when it had been Fiona, and Mickey didn’t want to see that happen to one of them again.

“So what’s the plan?” Iggy asked.

“We’re gonna follow them back to their place.”

“What if they see us?”

“Then we’ll run them off the road.”

That was good enough for Iggy, and he disappeared around the corner posthaste. Mickey parked across the Alibi and left the engine on idle; Iggy had no fucking sense of discretion, and he fully expected to see the white van come tearing down the street like a bat out of hell.

It did just that.

Iggy followed in hot pursuit, blaring his horn and weaving between the lanes like a crazy motherfucker, windows down and cackling like a hyena. Mickey’s heart was pounding in his throat, but he hit the gas as soon as they shot past him, cutting off the Jeep right behind the van. Iggy was already neck to neck with the assholes, flanking them from the right. The van swerved wildly to the left and then executed an illegal U-turn. It made straight for the I-90 and Mickey gunned the engine, pulling up to the car’s left. He rolled down the passenger seat window and aimed his revolver at the driver.

The van slammed on its brakes and came to a screeching halt. Mickey swung his truck over the divider and threw the gear into park. He scrambled out, gun in hand, and stopped cold when he saw the man behind the wheel. There was no _they_ , no Northside douchebag wearing frosted tips — there was just Sully, unarmed and trying to look tough.

Iggy cursed and lowered his AK. “Get out!” he shouted, banging on the van’s window. “Get the fuck out right now!”

Sully tumbled through the door, hands up in the air.

“So you’re working with the Northsiders now?” Mickey asked as evenly as he could.

Iggy stared at Sully in clear betrayal.

“Didn’t even bother giving you a gun before ditching you, huh?” Mickey said. “But in your boss’s defense, he probably thought you’d be packing.”

He walked up to the van and popped the trunk. The seats had been folded down; his masks and reagents were stacked neatly next to boxes of thermometers and pulse oximeters. He nodded at Iggy.

Iggy put his gun down and came to help Mickey transfer the van’s contents into his pickup.

Mickey kept his gun trained on Sully. “What’s his name?”

Sully’s lips moved without sound.

“Wanna say that louder?” Iggy snapped. “Or did you forget how to talk like a real man?”

He slammed shut the trunk and Sully jumped at the sound like the little bitch he was. His gaze darted between them, jittery and nervous, and his throat worked furiously. He swallowed, and finally croaked out: “Bill.”

“Bill what?” Mickey asked.

“Bill Heaton.”

Mickey looked at Iggy, who shook his head minutely. The name didn’t ring any bells, but Mickey hadn’t expected it to.

“Well then,” he said to Sully, “you’re going to tell Bill Heaton that if he tries to fuck with us again, I will hunt him down and rip his intestines out through his throat.”

Sully nodded mutely.

Mickey pulled a tarp over their spoils of war and latched the tailgate of his truck. “I see you sniffing around our business again, things won’t end pretty,” he said, clicking the safety of his gun back on. He tucked it into his belt and glanced his brother, who was still glaring daggers at Sully. “Let’s go, Iggy.”

Iggy finally tore his eyes away from Sully. “You sell us out again and I’ll skin you alive,” he said to Sully, voice razor sharp. “You hear me?”

“Yeah,” Sully said hoarsely.

Iggy bent down and slung his gun over his shoulder. “Fucking Northside scumbags,” he muttered half to himself. “Won’t even get their own hands dirty, no, gotta rely on a Southside pussy to get the job done.”

Sully paled, but he didn’t say anything to defend himself. Mickey paused before he climbed inside his truck. Sully was still standing rooted to the spot, watching them with a blankness that chilled Mickey to the bone.

 _Why’d you do it?_ Mickey wanted to ask. But the dead look in Sully’s eyes told him everything he needed to know. Loyalty didn’t mean shit when it didn’t put a roof over your head or food in your stomach — really, it was just a faster way to end up dead.

\--

Sully was a two-timing rat-faced bastard.

He was also a bad penny in the worst of ways.

He called the house that night, blubbering incoherent apologies, and Mickey hung up on him after he started begging for a chance to make things right. People didn’t want to make things right, in Mickey’s experience; most people didn’t even like to admit their fuck-ups, much less actually _work_ to make up for them, and it wasn’t like Mickey was holding a gun to his head, waiting for an admission of guilt. It came entirely of his own volition, which only made Mickey more certain that he was up to no good.

“He said he wants to turn on Bill,” Iggy said over the phone.

“You mean Bill fired him after seeing him for the pussy he is?”

Iggy laughed. “Probably. Anyway, he’s desperate for work, and since you’re the only other guy he knows in this line of business—”

“Tell him to fuck off.”

“Even if he’s bringing 15k masks to the table? 3M, N95, no valves, the surgical kind. He’s got them in two different sizes too.”

“No way he’s actually got them with him,” Mickey said. He’d heard it all before, from guys who knew other guys in China, to con artists who swore up and down they had an in with the construction industry. “At best he’s got their _location_.”

“But that’s still a solid lead! Beats waiting for a trickle-down from California.”

“It really doesn’t,” Mickey said. “First rule of procuring masks — they don’t exist if you can’t see them. Say what you want about the Californians, but at least I know what I’m getting with every shipment.”

“Well, he’s not asking you for any money upfront, is he?” Iggy argued hotly. “He told me the masks were in the storage facility on West Pershing. Unit 44. Said I could check it out myself to see that he wasn’t lying, but I’d have to move fast, ‘cause Bill’s coming to collect on Sunday.”

“And he gave you all that info for free?” Mickey asked dubiously.

“He wants to get back into our good graces.”

“He was never _in_ our good graces!”

“Well. Speak for yourself.” There was a long pause on the line. “You used to be friendly with him.”

“We worked together for one summer.”

“Yeah. And then he started hanging out with me.”

“So you want me to give him a chance,” Mickey said flatly.

“Look, you don’t gotta do anything if you don’t like him. I can go with him to check out those masks, try to bring him back into the fold.”

“Bring him back— Iggy, he’s not a lost little lamb! He’s a grown ass man who sold us down the river to make a quick buck!”

“It wasn’t for cash, Mick, if that makes you feel any better. His girl’s got some rare autoimmune disease and he just wants to look out for her. He wanted in on the masks business and you weren’t hiring, so he went with the only other guy in the game.”

“Oh, so now this is my fault?” Mickey demanded.

“Of course not,” Iggy said gently. “I just thought you’d be more sympathetic, seeing as you feel the same way about Gallagher.”

He made a surprisingly good point. But Mickey was well-versed in deadbeat dads, and he knew in his gut that Sully with his dead eyes wasn’t going to be winning any prizes, either as a devoted husband or a loving father.

“I just have a bad feeling about him,” he said at last. “I don’t know, let’s just hold off on those masks for now, okay?”

“We only have until Sunday,” Iggy said mildly. “And we really need those masks. You promised Ian’s coworkers you’d secure their supplies, remember? You also told Linda you had her covered. And your deal with Markovich lasts until this wave ends.”

“I know,” Mickey said. “Just— just give me some time, okay? Something about him just rubs me the wrong way, and I’d like to be sure that he’s not sending us into a trap.”

“I don’t think he’d do that, Mick. He’s not _suicidal_.”

People didn’t have to be _suicidal_ to fuck with the Milkoviches; they just had to be well-connected and armed with a cunning plan. But that line of thought ran counter to what their knuckle tats boasted, so Mickey kept it to himself.

“One day,” he said to Iggy, “that’s all I’m asking. To do due diligence and all that.”

“Gallagher’s paranoia is rubbing off on you,” Iggy said very disapprovingly, but it wasn’t a hard no.

It wasn’t an okay either, and Mickey knew better than to take vague, resigned-sounding phrases as concessions, especially when they came from his brother.

“You’re not gonna do anything stupid, right?” he pressed.

“So is his heartlessness,” Iggy commented. “But yeah, no worries. I’ve got enough shit to deal with as it is.” He paused a beat. “You _are_ going to look into Sully’s offer, right?”

“Of course I am,” Mickey said, lying through his teeth. “You know me— always on the hunt for a good deal.”

\--

It occurred to him, right before he got into bed, that Iggy had always been good at figuring out his lies.

But then he thought about the constant fights they had these days, the things he’d yelled at Iggy for encouraging Ian to stay, the shit Iggy had lobbed back right before he cleared out to the RV, the godawful _hour-long_ argument they’d had over decontaminating procedures, and for fuck’s sake, Mickey could have decontaminated the whole house twice in the span of time it had taken for the fight to end, and he was just so fucking tired of it all.

It could wait, he decided. Iggy could wait.

\--

The emergency burner went off the next morning at 5:37 AM, shrill as a siren. He jackknifed straight up off the bed, and his blood ran cold when he saw Ian’s name on the phone’s display.

He hit the answer button instantly. “What’s wrong?” he asked, heart in throat.

“It’s Iggy,” Ian said without preamble. “You’re going to need to— oh, fuck, _oh fuck_.” He broke off, and Mickey sat on the bed, listening to Ian’s ragged breathing on the other end of the phone as a sickly dread began to gather in the pit of his stomach.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again, fear ratcheting higher and higher as the silence dragged on. “Ian, what the fuck is going on? Why are you calling me from work?”

“I’m at the front door,” Ian said. “But I didn’t want to come in and— oh, fuck it, just come out, Mickey, please.”

Mickey was already on his feet. He stumbled down the hallway and stopped dead at the living room window.

Iggy’s car was gone.

He must have gone to Sully.

Sully must have— for _Ian_ to call from work about Iggy, for _Ian_ to make a house call while he was still on shift—

Ian must have been the one to answer the call—

It felt like Mickey was dreaming.

“ _Mick, you still there—_ ”

He glanced down and realized that he was still clutching the phone. “Is he— is he still alive?”

Mickey could handle everything else, he could deal with injuries and hospitals and fucking jail if it came down to it, he’d pay off the people he could and take a job with the council—

The door swung open. Ian’s eyes were red and the knees of his uniform were soaked red, like he’d been kneeling in a pool of blood.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, tears welling up. “There was nothing I could do.”

Mickey heard his own voice, far away, saying, “What happened to him?”

Ian shook his head. “I was the first on the scene. After the cops. It happened fast—”

Mickey’s eyes kept drifting to the blood. God, there was so much blood— Ian must have been kneeling in it for it to soak through like that, how must Iggy have felt as he—

“Did he bleed out?” he asked.

“You should sit down—”

“Just tell me what happened!”

“He fell off a building this morning trying to outrun the cops.” Ian’s voice quavered, but he held it as steady as he could. “I got the call. When we got there, he was already gone.”

“I want to see him,” Mickey said numbly.

Ian hesitated.

“I swear to God, Ian, if you try to stop me from seeing my _brother_ —”

“I’ll take you to him,” Ian said. “Later, I swear. But you have to pull yourself together right now. The cops are here. They want to ask you about Iggy’s activities.”


	5. a grave, deep and narrow

The interrogation dragged on for hours. Mickey sat whitefaced and dry-eyed as the cops grilled him, and he didn’t look at Ian once. He maintained that he didn’t know anything about Iggy’s extracurricular activities, or whom Iggy might have been meeting, or why he’d been at the storage facility at 4 AM in the morning.

“He didn’t have a council-approved job,” Detective Kelly said, staring hard at Mickey. “Surely you must know where he got his income?”

“He didn’t work,” Mickey said wearily. “Ian’s the breadwinner of the family.”

“So he freeloaded off your boyfriend here?”

“He had partial ownership of the house,” Ian interjected. “No one’s freeloading off anyone here.”

Kelly folded his notebook and set it down on the coffee table. “We caught your brother trying to break into the CPD’s supply of PPE. We have good reason to believe that he was engaging in PPE trafficking. Milkovich, we’re familiar with your family’s history with law enforcement — do you expect us to believe that you were entirely ignorant of your brother’s activities?”

“Yes,” Mickey said, “because that’s the truth. I haven’t left the house since Ian started working at the station. I’ve been under voluntary self-quarantine.”

“And you didn’t ask your brother to source PPE for Gallagher.”

“The station provides me with PPE,” Ian said.

“Gallagher, we did you the courtesy of agreeing to interview Milkovich in the comfort of his own home. Don’t make us take him down to the station for individual questioning.”

Ian bit his tongue.

Mickey stayed silent, and Kelly looked meaningfully around the house.

“If I were to get a warrant,” he said, in a tone that insinuated he was definitely going to secure that warrant no matter what Mickey said, “what do you think I might find?”

Mickey’s head snapped up and for a moment he looked so coldly furious that Ian was afraid he might haul off and hit the man. But just as quickly, he schooled his expression into blankness again. “Go ahead,” he said tonelessly. “While you’re at it, you can search his RV too.”

He was far too meticulous to keep his stash in the house, and the cops knew it too.

Kelly gave him a long look, and then got to his feet. “That’ll be all for now, Milkovich. You keep your nose clean, you hear me?”

Mickey didn’t say a word.

Ian waited until the cops had left, and then he approached Mickey tentatively.

Mickey stayed motionless. He sat on the couch, arms wrapped tightly around his chest, looking so bleak and brittle that Ian was scared to touch him.

Ian knelt down in front of him, and then reached out to touch his knee. “Mickey,” he pleaded, “will you look at me?”

Mickey stirred. “You said you’d take me to him,” he said, still using that strange, colorless voice. “I want to go now.”

Ian balked at the thought. Iggy had died horribly — fractured skull, snapped neck, broken limbs. His body was smashed beyond recognition; what good could it do Mickey to see him like that? To see his brother, who’d been so vital and animated just hours ago, lying in a pool of his own blood, limbs twisted at strange angles.

“Don’t you think,” he said quietly, “Iggy might prefer—”

“Don’t you _dare_ tell me what you _think_ my brother might want,” Mickey snarled. “He’s my brother— I know him better than anyone else in this world—” He broke off and looked away, mouth a thin tight line. “I have to bring him home,” he finally gritted out between his teeth, after he’d regained his composure.

“Okay,” Ian said helplessly. “Okay, we’ll do that.”

He drove Mickey to the morgue.

Mickey was a silent specter in the passenger seat. He’d pulled himself together to deal with the cops, and even now he maintained his air of tight control, evinced in the white knuckled grip he had on his arms. He held himself like he thought sheer physical force could keep him together, and he kept his face turned towards the window so Ian couldn’t see his expression, but the wetness on his cheeks gave him away.

He was crying silently.

The only sound in the car was Mickey’s ragged breathing. Ian stared straight ahead, desperate to give him some privacy.

After a while, Mickey wiped his face dry and put on a new mask.

The medical examiner didn’t find any traces of the virus in Iggy’s system, so the body was released to them immediately. The workers brought the body out in black bag and unzipped just the top so that Mickey could verify its identity.

Iggy stared up at them with lifeless eyes, features frozen in a rictus of shock and dawning horror.

Mickey’s face was ashen. He said in a low voice, “Oh God,” and then he took off his mask, walked over to the trash can in the corner, and was quietly sick into it.

Ian looked on wretchedly, wishing he’d thought of smoothing Iggy’s eyes shut at the scene.

There was a knock behind them.

“Excuse me,” the morgue attendant said apologetically from the door, “but do you want to buy a cardboard refrigerator box?”

\--

Ian paid for the box and loaded Iggy’s body into the back of the pickup.

“Do you— do you want to cremate him?” he asked hesitantly. “Or bury him? The crematories are booked until next week, but if we drive out to the countryside, we can build a bonfire. Or I can get him a real coffin—”

“We’ll bury him in the backyard.”

“In that— in the cardboard box?”

“Does it matter?” Mickey looked at him bleakly. “He’s dead, Ian. A gold casket’s not gonna bring him back. All of the fancy stuff, all the flowers, the wreaths, the speeches, all that shit, they’re meant to bring comfort to the living. The dead doesn’t give a fuck.”

They took Iggy home and started digging. The neighborhood was silent, except for the distant roar of the highway. Iggy deserved better, Ian thought, feeling sick with grief. He’d been trying to do something _good_ , and they’d thrown him off a building for his trouble. And now he was going to rot for eternity in a hole in the ground. No headstone, no cross, not even a casket in case the sewer line ever broke.

Mickey got whiter and whiter as they dug deeper and deeper. When Ian jumped into the hole so he could shovel faster, Mickey straightened abruptly and said in a strange, distant voice, “I can’t— wait here.”

Ian heard the clatter of the shovel falling and he hurriedly hauled himself out of the hole, just in time to see Mickey disappear into the RV. His first instinct was to drop his shovel and go after Mickey, but then he thought of Mickey saying _wait here_ in that horrible, strained tone, and he wondered if Mickey wanted to be left alone.

They had been living in each other’s pockets for years now. It was normal to want some space to grieve.

But he hated the thought of Mickey going through Iggy’s belongings by himself, and he didn’t think Mickey wanted to do that either. Mickey never said, but Ian knew he hated being alone more than anything else.

He heaved himself up and went to the RV. Mickey had left the door ajar, but Ian knocked anyway, and then pushed the door all the way in.

Mickey stood in the middle of the cramped space. He barely turned when he heard Ian enter, but he spoke to Ian all the same: “Look at this shithole.” He gestured at the stained walls, the ratty sofas. “I made my brother move into this glorified tin can because I was afraid he’d catch the virus. He lived in squalor before he died when he could have been living in his childhood home.”

He was shaking. He made a terrible, strangled noise, a half sob that was wrenched out of his body, and then he put his hand over his eyes and sobbed freely. He was trembling, his chest rising and falling so fast that his breaths were coming in jagged bursts, and Ian couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He put his arms around Mickey and held on as Mickey shuddered and shook against him, hot tears soaking through his uniform.

“I was so afraid he’d get the virus from us,” Mickey gasped into his shoulder. “But he had a ninety percent chance of surviving that. If I’d let him stay in his room, I would have heard when he tried to sneak—” His voice broke.

“You were trying your best—”

Mickey shoved him away. “No, I wasn’t!” he shouted. “He didn’t want to move out! I could have let him stay in the basement. I could have made _you_ stay in the basement. But I wanted to keep fucking you, and I didn’t want to keep disinfecting the house to keep him safe, and now he’s _dead._ My brother’s dead—”

He took a step back, and then slid down against the kitchenette, as if his legs couldn’t hold him up any longer. “Don’t you understand?” he asked wetly. “The cops said Iggy used one of my burners to contact Sully. They were laying that trap for _me_. If I hadn’t promised everyone masks when I could barely source them, or if I’d shot Sully that day when he tried to steal my shipment, Iggy would still be alive. He died because he had a lazy cumrag for a brother who was absolute _shit_ at his one job—”

“Stop talking about yourself like that,” Ian said miserably. “You told him not to go.”

“But I should have known he would have gone anyway! He was my big brother, and he thought you wouldn’t have enough masks, and I was so scared—” He let out another low sob, and then trailed off, crying silently and openly.

Ian crouched down in front of him. “Do you,” he started, before faltering because the question was too terrible to linger on. But he had to know— “Do you blame me for taking this job?”

“No,” Mickey said instantly. Too quickly. He looked up at Ian, his face a mess of tears, and then glanced away. “Of course not,” he continued quietly. “But I wish you hadn’t taken it all the same.”

\--

They buried Iggy with his posters and records.

Mickey didn’t get out of bed for the next three days. Ian cooked, but Mickey refused to touch the food. He slept with his arm flung over his eyes and the curtains closed, and the only sign that he was awake at times was the way his breath would quicken and shallow, as if he were repressing a sob.

On the day before Ian had to go back to work, he woke up in the middle of the night to find the other side of the bed cold. He stared at the rumpled sheets, uncomprehending for a moment, and then bolted out of bed when he realized that Mickey had gone missing.

“Mick!” he shouted, running into the living room. “Where are— oh, there you are. _What_ the fuck are you doing?”

Mickey was sitting at the kitchen table, making hollow-tipped bullets with a grim-faced determination. At Ian’s voice, he looked up, annoyed, and said shortly, “What’s it look like?”

“No,” Ian said desperately. “I can’t let you shoot the cops.”

“Not gonna shoot at _cops_.”

“Or Sully. And Bill.”

“Well then, you’re shit outta luck.”

They stared at each other. Mickey looked away first, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.

“The cops will catch you,” Ian said rapidly. “They’ll shoot you, or they’ll send you off to some backwaters hick town to work in some godawful factory where you’ll lose a limb or two, and possibly contract the virus—”

Mickey wheeled on him, eyes alight with rage.

“Then let them!” he exploded. “They can try talking to the barrel of my AK— see who’s a faster draw.”

He looked absolutely sincere, and it sent chills down Ian’s spine.

“You can’t get yourself arrested or killed, Mick,” Ian pleaded. “I’m barely keeping it together as it is. You are the _one_ person keeping me sane—”

“A tall order for someone who’s barely sane himself,” Mickey scoffed. He stared fixedly at the bullets in his hands. “Ian, what would you do if someone killed Lip?”

Ian didn’t say anything.

“I think you’d hunt him down,” Mickey said after a beat. “He’d do the same for you. Same goes for any of your siblings. That’s baseline when it comes to family. You think it’s any different for us Milkoviches?”

“Of course not.”

“Then you get it.”

He made it sound so simple, so clean-cut. Ian was frantically aware that he needed to come up with an argument, something that Mickey couldn’t dismiss or ignore, something that would make him see _sense_ , but all he could think of was Iggy’s crumpled body on the pavement.

He didn’t have anything useful to say, so he sat down next to Mickey and took his wrist. Mickey looked up at him.

“I am begging you,” Ian said, “I will get down on my knees if it helps— please. Don’t throw away our future for this.”

Mickey went very pale. “This isn’t about _us_ ,” he said with great difficulty.

“But that’s _exactly_ what you’re putting on the line,” Ian argued furiously. “Can’t you see that?”

Mickey looked wretched. “Even so,” he said, “what am I supposed to do? Just let those bastards walk free? I _can’t_ do that, Ian, I just can’t—”

“So you’re choosing your _stupid_ plan for revenge over our relationship?”

Silence flooded the room.

“Was that an ultimatum?” Mickey asked softly.

“No,” Ian said.

It really wasn’t, even though it might have come off that way. He bit his lip. Somewhere along the way, he’d gotten awful at asking for things from Mickey. Requests came out as orders; pleas came off as threats. 

“I guess that was the Gallagher version of begging,” Mickey said with an ugly twist to his mouth. “Ian, I’ve put you first for the past six years. My brother’s dead. That’s what it took for him to displace you temporarily. You think you can deal?”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“That’s _exactly_ what you meant. And I’ll come right out and say it— I want justice for Iggy a hell lot more than I want to sleep with you, right now. That answer your question?”

Mickey didn’t make a habit of being vicious, but he never failed to gut Ian when he tried.

“I never said I didn’t want justice for Iggy,” Ian said. It was the only thing Mickey had said that he could bear addressing.

“It was implied,” Mickey said, lip curling scornfully. “Because it would _inconvenience_ you and your family, and God forbid that should happen. I mean— Iggy was like the pet dog Fiona never let you have. You joked about keeping him chained up in the basement, but you never stopped to think that this was his home too — he lived here all his life! As for me— I’m just a warm mouth to you. I don’t even think you actually _like_ me. You never visited me in prison. Svetlana had to _pay_ you to come, and all you did was mock me, and even after Mandy got me out, you kept acting like I was bad news, like I _deserved_ to be locked up for fifteen years. I wasn’t even going to get back with you, but you said you’d change. And that was clearly a fucking lie. You do whatever you want, whenever you want. Well, fuck you Ian— you don’t get a say in what I do either. You and your siblings can go pound sand.”

He tilted his chin up defiantly, and in that instant, Ian wanted to hit him. 

Mickey must have read the violence in his expression, because he looked bleakly triumphant, like he’d expected this from Ian, and Ian wondered desperately how the conversation had spiraled out of control like this, when all he’d wanted to do was comfort Mickey.

He didn’t want to fight with Mickey.

“You’re not just a warm mouth to me,” he bit out, almost surprised by how evenly the words came out. “And I do like you— I _love_ you— and even though I didn’t love your brother, I liked him too. He deserved better. I _do_ think that. I’m sorry I made you think otherwise.”

He stopped and looked at Mickey, unsure how to continue. Mickey kept sitting there, looking miserable and angry and sick under the harsh fluorescent lights.

“I can’t stop you from getting revenge,” Ian said at last. “Just— before you do anything stupid. Try putting yourself first for a change.”

\--

Ian went to work wishing he’d called in sick.

“You could,” his partner offered. “Pretty sure we’ve been exposed a hundred times over. Just say you’re feeling under the weather— that should get you a day off.”

“I don’t think Mickey wants to see me right now,” Ian said, thinking of how Mickey had slept on the edge of the bed, determined to put as much distance as possible between the two of them.

“He’ll come around. He’s just grieving right now.”

“I guess,” Ian said, and then the calls came and they didn’t have time to talk.

Mickey answered the phone that night and they made horrible, strained small talk about the weather.

“You should add another blanket when I’m not there,” Ian said, because he was the main source of body heat between the two of them.

“I packed you a thicker jacket,” Mickey said, just as polite. “It’s in your bag.”

They were careful with each other in a way they hadn’t been since the beginning, tiptoeing around the dozen of elephants in the room. Mickey clearly regretted what he’d said the other night, but they both knew he meant every word, and short of shooting Sully himself, Ian didn’t know _how_ he could make Mickey happy.

“You’re staying safe, right?” he asked.

“Of course,” Mickey said.

There was a rustling sound on the other end of the line, like someone was flipping through a stack of papers. Ian thought he could make out voices in the background.

“Do you have _company?_ ” he asked in disbelief.

“I have the TV on,” Mickey said.

It was a blatant lie.

“I wouldn’t blame you for having Sandy over,” Ian said. “Or any of your cousins.”

“It’s not Sandy,” Mickey said promptly. “Or one of my cousins.”

He didn’t offer any more information.

“Okay,” Ian said. “Just— stay out of trouble, okay?”

“I gotta go,” Mickey said. “Check your bag.”

He hung up without saying goodbye.

“What did I tell you,” his partner said sagely.

“Shut it, Brian,” Ian said, feeling sick with worry.

He checked his bag and found the jacket Mickey had packed him. He stuck his hand into the pocket when Brian wasn’t looking and his blood ran cold when he came across a phone.

It was a flip-phone. One of Mickey’s burners.

“Brian, I think I’m going to take that sick day,” Ian said slowly.

His partner looked moderately concerned. “You need me to cover for you?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.” 

“No problem,” Brian said easily. “Want me to drop you off at home?”

That was when the dispatcher called.

 _There’s a riot on West Pershing_ , she said, and a cold dread washed over Ian. _We need you two on standby._


	6. i would hide my face in you

In the end, it had only taken a mass text. People were desperate for any kind of relief, and the promise of medical supplies was so tantalizing that it didn’t matter if the text had come from a burner number. He’d texted the address, the unit number, and the guarantee that blood had been spilled for the goods, and the crowds had come.

“You’re just gonna give everything away?” Colin asked incredulously.

“Why the fuck not,” Mickey said. “Wasn’t mine to begin with.”

They were in the empty office building overlooking the storage facility, watching as the people thronged below.

“Iggy would have been proud,” Colin offered.

Mickey grunted. “Still think he would have been happier with Sully’s head on a platter.”

“Nah, this is smarter. Iggy liked _smart_ ideas.” Colin paused. “Mick, you know you’re still gonna have to leave Chicago after this, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a place in mind?”

“Yeah, I do,” Mickey said. “I’m gonna go find Mandy. She deserves to know.”

Colin looked at him sharply. “You think you can make it past the border?”

“Most of my stuff comes from California. I’ll manage.”

His suppliers hadn’t been thrilled about losing Mickey’s business, but Mickey had promised to hook them up with Sandy and her brothers. They’d been happy to get him a California ID after that.

“What about Gallagher?” Colin asked hesitantly. “Does he know?”

“Not yet,” Mickey said shortly. “But I think he’s close to figuring it out.”

“You think he’s gonna come with you?”

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t a question he wanted to linger on. He’d know soon enough anyway.

A wet and heavy snow had begun to fall on the city, but the crowd around the facility kept getting bigger.

“I did a little investigating,” Mickey said. “Heaton owns 44. The cops are renting 27 and 28, and Swanson has something squirreled away in 16.”

Even his fellow councilmembers loathed Swanson. The asshole was a great proponent of rationing, because he believed in “warlike measures in warlike times.”

Mickey had no doubt he’d built up a nice little stash of supplies, considering the way he’d been hoarding.

“16, 27, 28, and 44,” Colin said. “Got it. I’ll let the crowd know.” But he made no attempt to move. After a while, he said in a quavering voice, “I’m never gonna see you again, am I?”

Mickey turned to look at his brother. Drank in the sight of him, his dirty face, his red-rimmed eyes, his tangled curls. “You could come with me,” he offered quietly, already knowing what the answer would be. “Or once I’m settled in California. You could all follow me there.”

“I’ll ask Annie,” Colin said. “She keeps saying she wants to visit Hollywood.”

“You do that,” Mickey said.

The wail of sirens cut through the air.

“That’s my cue to go,” Colin said, but he stayed rooted to the spot.

“C’mere,” Mickey said, rough with strain, and then he went to his only remaining brother in the world and hugged him, and his brother held him back.

After Colin left, he looked down again. He could make out his brother’s head of blond curls bobbing in the crowd. There was an ambulance and three police cars parked in front of the facility. No doubt more troops were on their way, but it wouldn’t matter.

People were getting tired of dying. Armies of cops wouldn’t be able to persuade them otherwise.

He touched the burner in his pocket.

“Thinking of calling me?”

Mickey whirled around to see Ian standing in the doorway.

He stalked over to Mickey, looking so angry that for a wild moment Mickey wondered if they were going to call it all off. But then Ian was standing in front of him, and he just looked lost. He cupped Mickey’s face roughly with both hands and _looked_ at him, eyes searching for something only he knew, and then he made a strangled noise of frustration and leaned down and kissed Mickey hard. He was rough, his mouth hot and demanding against Mickey’s, his fingers digging into Mickey’s shoulders, forearms, waist, every touch a declaration of _mine, mine, mine_ , and when he broke away, Mickey could taste blood in his mouth.

Ian stood there, looking even more disheveled than he had before.

“What,” he demanded hoarsely, “am I going to do with you?”

“Come with me,” Mickey said. “I’m leaving for California.”

“Why the fuck do you think I came?”

He grabbed Mickey’s wrist in a bruising grip and dragged him to the window. “Look outside. This place is _swarming_ with plainclothes officers. How were you planning on escaping?”

“It’s snowing. Everyone’s gonna be white-haired.”

“That doesn’t even _answer my question_. Do you know Tommy’s at the bar right now, betting Kevin that you won’t make it out of Chicago?”

The mention of Tommy wiped out any levity Mickey might have felt. “Of course he is,” he said shortly. “Sully’s his family. I’m not expecting any well-wishes from him.”

“Well, Kevin’s gonna take him for everything he’s got,” Ian promised. “I came with Tony. He’s gonna get us out of here tonight.”

“ _Tony Markovich_?”

“Why are you so surprised? Didn’t he help you hide the shit you stole from Heaton? He’s out back right now, behind the building.”

“That was _payment_ ,” Mickey said, dizzy from shock. “He’s still a cop.”

“He’s Southside too, through and through.”

Ian looked out the window again, and then started moving toward the staircase, hand clamped tight around Mickey’s arm. “We gotta move now. The other cops are gonna be headed our way anytime now.”

They found Tony parked discreetly behind the dumpster. Ian hurriedly ushered Mickey into the backseat and climbed in behind him, and then he said to Tony, “How far can you get us?”

“Oak Lawn,” Tony said, looking pinched and strained. “Any farther, people are gonna start asking questions.”

He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could look at them as he drove. “Ian’s already grabbed your stuff,” he informed Mickey. “I found him at the house just before my colleagues arrived.”

“Is he wanted too?” Mickey asked, his throat suddenly tightening. “But isn’t he supposed to have immunity?”

“I imagine he’ll be wanted once he leaves with you. He packed two bags and took all the cash.”

“Half the cash,” Ian corrected. “Tony’s gonna give the other half to Svetlana and Yev.” He shot Mickey a look that was a little regretful. “We can’t say goodbye in person, but I _did_ give Tony your burner to give to them.”

Mickey opened his mouth to say something, and then he realized that he’d gone speechless with a quiet giddiness. Ian had chosen _him_ without hesitation over everything he’d ever known.

Words were inadequate.

“Ian’s shaping up to be quite the criminal mastermind,” Tony said drolly.

Ian flushed with a triumphant pride. “This,” he said, looking sideways at Mickey, “is why you should have brought me along on runs.”

“You already had a full-time job,” Mickey said, but he looked around in the car and wondered if he’d been wrong for keeping Ian at arm’s length when it had come to his family’s illicit activities. They hadn’t been _illicit_ ; they’d been necessary, and if Ian had been involved—

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Tony said sincerely. “The department shouldn’t have done that.”

The light mood in the car vanished instantly.

“Yeah, well, Milkoviches have always been fucked for life,” Mickey said.

He thought bitterly that if Ian had been involved with the Milkovich family business, he’d have been fucked for life as well. The _stigma_ never vanished, and to be both a Gallagher and a Milkovich— Mickey might as well have signed Ian’s death warrant himself.

“I never brought you along because of the risks,” he said to Ian, and he knew the hypocrisy of what he’d just said was unbearable, given their current straits.

He couldn’t bring himself to meet Ian’s eyes.

“I’m careful,” Ian said with steel in his voice, “I don’t go off halfcocked. I plan ahead and I’m always discreet, and most importantly, I’m paranoid as fuck.”

“Right,” Mickey said wearily, “but I don’t _want_ you living like that.”

“You don’t get to make that choice for me.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m just trying to make sure that you’re not doing this in the heat of the moment. I mean, you have your life together right now, Ian. You don’t have to give that all up, you can still turn back. You can go home. You didn’t even say goodbye to your family—”

“I did,” Ian said. “I told Lip I was doing what he and Fiona should have done a long time ago.”

Mickey stared at him. “And he was okay with that?”

“Why are you like this?” Ian demanded. “Since when do you give a fuck about what _Lip_ thinks? I thought you’d be _happy_ that I’m coming.”

“I’m happy,” Mickey said honestly. “I’m fucking _ecstatic_ , but I’m also trying to be realistic over here. You’re signing up to live on the run, and that shit is just fucking _awful_. The stress is going to fuck with your head, and we won’t even have a roof over our heads on some nights, and I don’t even know when I’m gonna be able to afford the coyotes—”

“How much do you need?” Tony interrupted.

“They don’t take cash. They take favors.”

“Then we’ll give them their fucking favors,” Ian said savagely. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get over the border.”

The silence stretched out. Finally, Mickey said, “It wasn’t so long ago that you’d have done whatever it took to stay in Chicago.”

“I thought it would be good for us,” Ian said, voice shaking. “I thought I was making the best decision for us—”

He cut himself off abruptly, looking pale and drawn, and Mickey wished that he hadn’t said anything, because that hadn’t been what he’d meant.

“Never said I was smart,” Ian said with a bitter twist to his mouth. “So here I am, trying to learn and grow from my mistake.”

\--

Tony dropped them off in the nearest shopping center that didn’t have security cameras in the parking lot. He nodded to them, said, “Take care,” and disappeared into the night, and after he was gone, Ian picked up their bags from the ground.

“Pick a car,” he said to Mickey. “We’re going to be ditching it in Missouri, so we don’t have to be married to it.”

“That 2002 Taurus right there,” Mickey said, “nobody’s gonna miss that piece of crap.”

“Christ, at the very least pick a junker I can stretch my legs in.”

They ended up hotwiring a 2003 Outback. Ian insisted on driving and told Mickey to get into the backseat, where the windows were tinted.

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” he said, catching Mickey’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I never told you, because you’d have freaked out. Don’t deny it. You used to be the one who didn’t want to leave.”

“I thought the pandemic had changed your mind,” Mickey said, thinking about their conversation on the docks.

“I just said that because I didn’t want you feeling like you had to move to Wisconsin. You fucking hate Wisconsin.”

He was rewriting history again, freehanding something more palatable to them both.

“You won’t be able to see your family again.”

“Or maybe they’ll pack up and head out for California,” Ian countered. ”Maybe this will be the push they need to finally get out of the shithole we live in.”

Mickey thought fleetingly of Colin, Sandy, Jamie, Joey. “You think California hands out family unification visas?”

“They will by the time I finish lobbying. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’ve come up with a foolproof plan.” Ian patted his jacket, where he kept the envelope of cash that was supposed to last them until California. “This is just to get us settled in Colorado. There’s this town there— actually, there are _towns_ that were wiped out in the first wave. There’s not enough people to repopulate them, so they’re just sitting empty at this point.”

“You want us to squat there? Thought we’d stay close to the border.”

“They’ll be looking for us there. Best to stay where there’s no people at all. We won’t have running water, but we have a car, as long as we top up it up from time to time, we can go into town to get the stuff we need. We’ll have to change out the plates and scrape off the VIN. We need to make sure the car has heat, and it’s got to be big enough, so we can bunk in the car if it gets too cold. We need new burners, can you get your suppliers to send us some? We’ll be doing jobs for them, so we need a way to stay in contact. How did you—”

He was panicking.

“We’ll get in touch with the guys in California after we get settled,” Mickey promised. “First, we gotta get to Colorado. I say we ditch this car for one of those fuel efficient ones, before we get another SUV. We don’t gotta worry about the plates and the VIN before we enter Colorado.”

“Right,” Ian said. “We gotta be smart about money. We only got a couple thousand dollars, and that’s not gonna stretch very far.”

Mickey studied him worriedly. “Yeah,” he said, a knot tightening in his stomach. “We need to budget. But don’t worry, I’ve got us covered.”

Ian drove through the night, saying that he was used to pulling 48 hour shifts, and he wasn’t even 24 hours in yet. Mickey dozed uneasily in the backseat, waiting for his turn to drive. He could feel a headache coming on, and when he woke up, mouth full of cotton, it felt like someone had run his throat through a cheese grater.

“We’re almost out of the state,” Ian said, looking in the mirror. “And we’re almost out of gas.”

They dumped the Taurus twenty miles from the border. The only car they could find that qualified as fuel efficient as a 2006 Civic, and this time Ian didn’t complain about the cramped space. He refused to let Mickey take the wheel, because he thought the cops were scanning drivers for black hair, and Mickey was too tired to argue.

The next time he opened his eyes, they’d entered Colorado.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” he croaked out, struggling upright. He swallowed experimentally, and it felt like he was gargling shards of glass.

“I couldn’t get you to,” Ian said sharply. “So I thought fuck it, might as well let you sleep your fill.”

Mickey glanced at the clock. “You’ve been driving for fourteen hours straight,” he said in disbelief.

“Like I said, I’m used to pulling long shifts.” He paused. “Want to take your turn now?”

They switched. Mickey got behind the wheel and adjusted the seat. He fought the urge to lean his head against the wheel; his head pounded, and his stomach roiled with nausea.

“Ian,” he said carefully, “did you bring the Clorox?”

Ian paused. “Tony gave me a can of Lysol.”

“Okay. Spray down the backseat, and then get in the back. And leave all the windows open.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m coming down with something and I don’t want you to get it.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Ian said. “You’re not getting behind the wheel like this.”

“You drove _fourteen_ hours nonstop. You’re as good as drunk right now.”

“Don’t fuck with me right now, Mickey. Hand me the keys.”

Whatever caution Ian had exercised on their way to Colorado went out the window now. He drove like a madman with all the windows down as Mickey shivered uncontrollably in the backseat.

“Ian,” Mickey said tightly when he thought he couldn’t bear it any longer, “you have to pull over.”

Ian parked in the middle of the dirt road and Mickey tumbled out of the car, going to all fours. He threw up until he was dry heaving, and he thought he might have thrown up pieces of his stomach lining; his stomach was on fire, his throat felt like barbed wire, and his head hurt like someone had taken a bat to it.

Ian crouched down next to him and handed him a bottle of water. “Wash out your mouth,” he ordered. “We’re just miles away.”

Mickey swished the water around in his mouth and spat it out.

“Good,” Ian said, “now get back in the car. I don’t want to do this out here.”

They found Ian’s empty town just east of Denver. It was nestled in the foothills, made of up a few sparse buildings that had fallen into disrepair.

Ian parked at a house on the end of a small winding street, and rushed out to help Mickey out of the car.

“Don’t,” Mickey said, shying away when Ian reached out to touch him.

“It’s okay,” Ian said, hand closing over Mickey’s wrist in an iron grip. “I probably gave it to you in the first place.”

He manhandled Mickey out the car and through the door on the house’s side.

The house was mostly empty, everything of value already taken or smashed. Ian glanced wildly around the living room and settled on the cleanest patch of carpet in the center.

“We’ll ride out your fever right here,” he said in a tone that broached no argument. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of you.”

\--

Everything after was a blur of fever hallucinations. Mickey woke up once, coughing so hard that he was afraid he was going to expel a lung, and Ian was nowhere to be found. He stumbled to his feet, gagging and gasping for air as he called out for Ian, but no one answered, and then everything went black again.

He dreamed that he was back in his father’s house as a child, watching his mother pack her bags.

“I _have_ to,” she was saying to him, because he was old enough to talk to and still young enough to love her unconditionally. “I have to save myself, or there’ll be _nothing_ left.”

He watched her mutely as she walked out the door and flagged down a cab, and he wanted to run after her, but his lungs were so heavy that he could barely walk.

He couldn’t breathe.

“You gotta turn over,” someone was saying to him. “You can’t lie on your back.”

He felt a man’s big hands rolling him over gently, onto something soft, and then a cup of cool water was pressed to his lips.

“Drink,” the same voice ordered.

It was Ian, he realized hazily, and suddenly it was very important that he tell Ian that he _understood_. He’d never hated his mother for leaving the way Mandy had, but he understood them both, and Ian needed to know that if Ian had left to save himself, he would have understood.

If Ian had gone back to his family because he didn’t want to be a deadbeat, Mickey still would have understood.

He didn’t want Ian to be resented the way their mothers were. Ian was too _good_ for that; he’d shouldered so much for his family, and he didn’t deserve to be lumped in with Monica.

“That’s— that’s not something I can control, Mick.” Ian’s voice sounded odd, like it was clogged with something. “You shouldn’t be worrying about that.”

There was something else he was worried about, and he struggled to remember. It was _important_ , it could fuck them up if it wasn’t attended to, it was why he was always worried sick about Ian.

“Hush,” Ian said, and Mickey’s mind went blank.

When he woke up again, the house was dark.

His chest felt too tight and his throat ached, but his head was clear for the first time in what felt like days. Ian was curled up around him like a large cat, hand tangled in Mickey’s hair.

Mickey nudged him weakly.

Ian’s eyes snapped open.

“Mickey,” he breathed out, “you’re awake.” He pressed his forehead against Mickey’s and then sat up gingerly. “Your fever broke last night. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Mickey rasped out, and then winced.

He tried to sit up. Ian helped him up with an arm around his shoulders; he leaned on Ian’s shoulder, already exhausted from his brief exertion, and surveyed the room.

Ian must have gone out and bought two quilts to stack together as a makeshift mattress. He was sitting on them right now, and even though he could still feel a chill in his bones, his joints didn’t ache as much as they would have if he’d lain directly on the floor. Ian had bought a pillow too, but no blankets. He’d been using their jackets to cover their bodies.

The floor was littered with pill containers and Gatorade bottles, and a small mountain of candy bar wrappers had formed in the corner of the room. Empty soda cans lined the wall like little tin soldiers standing guard.

“You couldn’t keep anything down,” Ian said, following Mickey’s eyes. “I must have bought up every form of liquid food in a twenty-mile radius.”

He nodded at the thermometer that lay next to Mickey’s elbow. “Your fever soared to 104 degrees. I would have taken you to the ER, arrest warrant be damned, if it hadn’t broken by today.”

“I’m sorry,” Mickey said, wishing that he’d never dragged Ian into this in the first place.

“What the fuck for? I was the one who gave it to you.”

Ian was shuddering. Mickey felt something wet drip onto his shoulders, and he looked up, astonished. Ian was crying, his face a complete ruin, eyes bloodshot, lashes clumped, snot and tears mixing on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped out, “I shouldn’t have taken the job. You were right. You were right about everything— if I agreed to go to Wisconsin, if I wasn’t so hellbent on being a hero, Iggy wouldn’t have died. I just didn’t want to be a farmer— I grew up in the city and I wanted to stay in the city, it made me feel—”

“Stop, Ian,” Mickey interrupted, feeling unbelievably wretched, “just stop. None of that was your fault.”

Ian subsided, still sniffling.

After a moment, Mickey said, “I shouldn’t have said those things after Iggy died.” He closed his eyes tightly. “It was my fault. I should have guessed what would have happened, but I just didn’t want to bother. And I was so angry at myself—” He swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

They sat huddled on the dirty floor, clinging to each other wordlessly.

Mickey began to shiver after a while, and Ian wrapped him up in one of his jackets.

“You didn’t buy a blanket?” he asked.

“I bought everything the store had. They only had the quilts left.”

“What did you buy?” Mickey said, taking a quick inventory of the room.

“Everything. I must have pumped thousands of dollars into the economy.”

Mickey straightened in alarm. “How much do we—”

“You should probably talk to your suppliers soon,” Ian said. “Don’t get mad at me, Mickey, I _had_ to. That money was the only thing keeping you alive, and if you died because I didn’t spend enough—” He broke off abruptly and looked away. He took a moment to collect himself. “Anyway, we can’t turn back now.”

He was swinging into mania, Mickey thought faintly. That was the thing he’d been so worried about.

“Ian,” he said, “did you bring your meds?”

“Yeah,” Ian said after a beat. And then the words came out in a rush: “What does it matter, Mickey? Your lungs are wrecked for the next three months. My mania’s the only fucking thing that will keep us alive, we _need_ it, okay? We’re on the one-yard line here, and this is going to get us over it—”

“They don’t work anymore, do they?”

Ian’s silence confirmed his worst fears.

Fuck, Mickey thought quietly to himself. “Okay,” he said out loud, “we can manage this.”

“I’m not going to do crazy shit,” Ian said, voice low. “Or even if I do— Mick, even when I was manic last time, I did my best to look out for us. I’m always going to do that. I got us this far, didn’t I?”

He looked downwards.

“You said yourself that I’m not Monica.”

Mickey’s heart ached for him. “Of course you’re not,” he said, reaching up to cup Ian’s cheek with a hand.

“Then you can trust me,” Ian said quietly.

Mickey looked out at the cluttered room. At all the different flavors of Gatorade, the different kinds of milkshakes and smoothies that he didn’t even remember drinking, the bedding, the thermometers, the clothes Ian must have packed.

“I do,” he said. “I really do.”

Ian exhaled in relief. “ _Good_.”

Tomorrow, Mickey thought, they’d leave for California. He’d beg his contacts for some leniency if he had to, promise to do jobs later. They had to get over the border and see a psychiatrist as soon as possible, get Ian’s meds sorted out before everything else. Ian’s health came first.

Afterwards, they’d go find Mandy.

They were already halfway there.

“I think we’ll really make it,” Ian said, almost wonderingly.

The sun was rising and the light caught in his red hair, a sudden burst of color in the drab living room. Ian looked young and hopeful and happy, and for the first time in years, Mickey thought that they’d be all right in the end.

He looked up and smiled at Ian. “We’ll make it,” he promised. “I'm sure of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title adapted from Eileen Chang's _Love in a Fallen City_. Some scenes are based very loosely on real life stories that happened decades ago in Shanghai, hence the title.
> 
> Chapter titles taken from Kafka's _The Castle_.


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